Marvel – I am Spiderman

The coffee was on his desk when he walked in. From the cart on the corner, not the Bugle's break room, which hadn't been cleaned since the Clinton administration and produced a liquid that tasted like burnt paper. Cardboard sleeve, black marker on the side: P.P. - black, 2 sugars.

Peter looked at the cup. Looked at Betty's desk. She was on the phone, pen behind her ear, writing something in the margin of a yellow legal pad. She didn't look up.

He sat down at the spare desk Jameson let him use when he was sorting photos and drank the coffee. It was still warm.

Betty hung up the phone and came over with a folder. She put it on his desk and opened it to a map of Manhattan with red dots on it. Printouts underneath. Timestamps.

"I was organizing the Spider-Man photo archive," she said. "Indexing by location and time for the filing system."

"You made Spider-Man a filing category?"

"He has a color tab. Green." She pulled out a printout. "These are the timestamps on your photos. And these," she pulled out another sheet, "are the police dispatch logs for the same incidents. They're public record."

Peter drank his coffee.

"There's a five-minute gap," Betty said. "On every photo. Five minutes between when the police dispatch goes out and when Spider-Man shows up in your picture. Every single time."

"He's fast."

"He is. But the police response time to those locations averages eleven minutes. So Spider-Man is getting there six minutes before the police. Every time." She tapped the map. "And your cameras are already set up."

"I told you. I know where he patrols."

"You're a terrible liar, Parker."

Her voice was light when she said it. But her eyes weren't. Steady. Interested.

"I'm actually a great liar," he said. "You're just paying too much attention."

"Maybe." She reached across and took a printout back. Her arm brushed his. She left it there, her forearm against his, warm through her cardigan sleeve. Then she pulled back and her ears went pink and she started organizing the folder again.

From behind the glass door: "BRANT! Did you call Stacy's office? CAPTAIN STACY. Tell him his Enhanced Crimes Unit can start by ENHANCING their response time because I have PHOTOS of Spider-Man BEATING THEM TO EVERY SCENE and if the NYPD can't-"

"I called," Betty said, loud enough to cut through the glass. "He's in a meeting."

"HE'S ALWAYS IN A MEETING."

Peter finished his coffee. P.P. Black, two sugars. She'd gone to the cart on the corner. She'd remembered.

The water fountain outside the second-floor bathroom had been leaking since September. The puddle was a permanent feature. Someone had put a wet-floor sign next to it in October and the sign was still there and the floor was still wet and nobody had fixed anything.

Liz and Flash were standing next to the wet-floor sign on Wednesday morning and they were not talking about the wet floor.

Flash was doing the thing he did when he was losing an argument, which was getting louder and using his hands more. His letter jacket was unzipped and his jaw was tight and he was saying something about Saturday and Liz's arms were crossed and she was looking at a point about six inches to the left of his face.

Peter walked past them toward third period. He caught Liz's eye as he passed. Nodded. Small, just a greeting.

The smile she gave back was quick and shaky and it didn't make it to both sides of her mouth. Her eyes held on him for a second, and then Flash said something louder and she looked back at him and the smile was gone.

Peter kept walking.

Harry fell into step with him in the stairwell, eating an apple. He had the sleeves of his uniform shirt rolled to his elbows, which was technically against dress code and which Harry had been doing since freshman year because nobody told Harry Osborn to unroll his sleeves.

"Liz asked about you," Harry said.

"About what?"

"About you. Not about anything. About you." He bit the apple. "She asked in a way that wasn't about Derek's party."

"What way was that?"

"The way where she asks if you're coming to the game on Friday and it's not really about the game." Harry threw the apple core at a trash can across the hall. He missed. He didn't go pick it up. "That's what makes it interesting."

"Everything's interesting to you, Harry."

"Because I pay attention." He grinned and split off toward his classroom. "Friday. Game. Be there."

The library was cold on Thursday.

Peter had been sitting in the same spot for the last four Thursdays. Third table from the window, chair facing the door. He read. He did homework sometimes. Mostly he read. The library was the one place in Midtown High that smelled like something other than floor wax and bodies.

Jessica Jones was in the same spot she'd been in for the last four Thursdays. Corner table, back to the wall, bag on the chair next to her. Different paperback. Same posture. Same hoodie. Her hair was in her face and she wasn't brushing it back.

For four weeks he'd sat down. She'd been there already. Neither of them had said a word to each other. He'd glance over, she'd be reading. She'd glance over, he'd be reading. The librarian's cart squeaked on its rounds. Someone in the back coughed every seven minutes like clockwork. Peter had timed it.

Today was different. He sat down. Opened his book. A page turned at her table. Then:

"You keep sitting there."

Her voice was lower than he expected. Quiet, not soft. There was a difference.

He looked up. She was looking at him over the top of her book. Dark eyes. The expression on her face was the one she always wore, flat and closed, except her mouth was slightly open, like the sentence had come out before she'd approved it and now she was waiting to see what happened.

"The light's good," Peter said.

She looked at the ceiling. At the fluorescent panel above his table, humming and slightly yellow, the same as every other fluorescent panel in the building.

"It's fluorescent," she said.

"Exactly."

Her mouth moved. A ghost of a smile.

She looked back at her book. He looked back at his. The kid in the back coughed.

But the bag was no longer on the chair next to her. She'd moved it to the floor. The empty chair was just sitting there, six inches of curtain pulled back, and she was reading like nothing had happened.

Gwen Stacy was standing by his chem lab bench on Friday with two coffees.

She'd been there when he walked in. Headband. Blue cardigan over a white blouse. She was holding the coffees with her hands getting tired but she wouldn't put them down.

"Black, two sugars," she said, and handed him one.

"How do you know that?"

"You drink it the same way every day. The cafeteria lady knows your order and she told me when I asked." She said this like it was a completely normal thing to have done. "I walked from the coffee place on Parsons. It's two blocks. I timed it so it would still be warm when you got to class."

Peter took the coffee. Warm.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome." She took a sip of hers. Hers had a tea tag hanging from the lid. She didn't drink coffee.

He sat down. She sat at the bench next to his, which wasn't her assigned seat. Her assigned seat was in the front row. She'd moved.

"I keep a column for you in my notes," she said. She pulled out a notebook. A smaller one, green cover, her initials on the spine in white-out. She opened it to a page with a header that said P.P. in careful block letters.

Below it, in Gwen's handwriting, was a list.

He couldn't read all of it from this angle but he caught fragments. PDG notation (not taught at Midtown). Grip strength - locker handle (Tuesday). Doesn't wear glasses anymore - when? Coffee order consistent (black, 2 sugars). Knows the answer before the question is finished. Reflexes - dodgeball (too fast).

"You have a column."

"I have a column." She closed the notebook. Her cheeks were pink but her voice was steady. "You're easy to be around, Peter. But you're also something else and I can't figure out what."

He looked at her. Blue eyes, headband, earnest in a way that had no performance in it. She meant every word.

"You just haven't looked closely enough yet," he said.

Her eyebrows pulled together. "That's the opposite of what I just said."

"I know."

She looked at him. He looked at her. The lab started filling up around them and Gwen went back to her seat in the front row with her tea and her green notebook and Peter drank his coffee and it was exactly the right temperature.

Cindy was on the Kissena Boulevard rooftop with her knees pulled up to her chest.

She was still in her school clothes. Ripped jeans, a sweatshirt too big for her that she'd stolen from him two weeks ago and hadn't given back. Her hair was down and the wind was pushing it across her face and she wasn't bothering with it.

Peter landed behind her. The bond hummed. Low, warm. A three on a night when the sky was clear and Queens was spread out below them, orange and white lights, a plane descending toward LaGuardia in the distance.

"Hey."

"Hey." She didn't look at him. She was picking at a loose thread on the cuff of the sweatshirt. His sweatshirt. "My mom found the solvent."

He sat down next to her. Close enough that his knee touched hers. "Which solvent?"

"The web solvent. Under my bed. I had it in a water bottle and she thought it was- I don't know. Drugs, maybe. She made me pour it out while she watched." Cindy pulled the thread loose from the cuff. Wound it around her finger. "She doesn't know what it was. She just knew it wasn't water."

"What did you tell her?"

"Science project." She unwound the thread. Wound it again. "She didn't believe me. She never believes me. She's going to start going through my room."

The wind came through and Cindy's hair blew across her face again. She didn't move it. Peter reached over and tucked it behind her ear. She leaned into his hand for a second, then straightened.

"It comes out when I'm not expecting it," she said. "The webbing. I'll be eating dinner and it comes out of my fingertips under the table. I'll be in class and I feel it start and I have to sit on my hands. Yesterday I was in the shower and it-" She stopped. "It's getting stronger. And I can't always control it."

"Mine express themselves through property damage instead of silk."

"That's not the same."

"It's a little the same. I dented my locker again on Tuesday. The fifth one. The custodian thinks I'm vandalizing my own locker, which is technically accurate."

Her mouth moved. The beginning of a smile she was holding back.

His hand was on her knee. The left one, where the rip in her jeans exposed a strip of skin above her kneecap. He wasn't sure when he'd put it there. The bond was warm between them, steady, a hum he could feel in his palm against her skin. His thumb moved. Small circles on the bare skin of her knee, slow, and the bond pulsed once in response, a low warm beat like a second heartbeat.

"That's not a power," she said. Quiet.

"I know."

Cindy dropped her head on his shoulder like she'd been holding it up all day and didn't have the energy to keep going. Heavy. Familiar. The sweatshirt she was wearing smelled like both of them and her hair was in his face and the bond settled to a two, lower than it had ever been, and the word for it was probably something but he was too busy drawing circles on her knee to look for it.

The plane over LaGuardia banked south. A dog was barking somewhere in the neighborhood below, steady and pointless, and nobody was telling it to stop.