Bruises
The trick to putting on a button-down with three cracked ribs was lifting your arms as little as possible. Peter figured this out Monday morning by lifting his arms too much, once, and spending thirty seconds standing very still in the bathroom with his eyes closed and his shirt half on and his vision doing things vision shouldn't do.
The ACE bandage Cindy had wrapped Saturday night was still tight. The bruise had changed overnight. Sunday it had been a purple wing across his ribs, the I-beam flange shape clear at the edges. Monday it was darker at the center and the yellow had crept further out and it still hurt when he breathed wrong.
He got the shirt on. Buttoned it. Tucked it in, then untucked it because the loose fabric hid the bandage better. Backpack on the right shoulder only.
Ben was at the kitchen table with the crossword. May had left for the early shift. Ben looked up, looked at Peter, looked at how Peter was holding himself. Said nothing. Went back to the crossword.
Peter ate toast standing because sitting down meant getting back up.
"Have a good day," Ben said. Pen in his hand. He didn't look up.
There was a cop at the front entrance of Midtown High.
Leaning against the flagpole with his arms crossed and a coffee cup and a radio on his belt. A printed flyer was taped to the door behind him. Peter could read it from the sidewalk.
SPIDER-MAN: IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. NYPD ENHANCED CRIMES UNIT — REPORT VIGILANTE ACTIVITY Two hundred thousand dollars in property damage. 10th Ave construction site. 10/14.
"Punk in a mask," the cop said to nobody as students went past. "Two hundred grand. Who pays for that? We do."
A freshman stopped and stared at the flyer and said "Spider-Man is awesome" and the cop said "Spider-Man is a property damage bill" and the kid's friend pulled him inside.
Peter walked past. His ribs ached under the untucked shirt and the flyer had his Saturday night on it, translated into property damage and stapled to a high school door. He'd been thinking about the chain trick, the web-tension angles, the physics of swinging himself onto a moving wingsuit. He hadn't been thinking about what a collapsed construction site costs somebody.
Flash hit him between second and third period.
The usual. Shoulder into the hallway traffic, the crowd parting for him because people who don't slow down get the right of way. He'd been doing it since freshman year. Before the bite it had knocked Peter into lockers.
Now it didn't knock him anywhere. Flash's shoulder caught him on the left side, right on the ribs, and Peter's vision went white.
His hand went flat against the nearest locker. Cold metal under his palm. The hallway moving around him. His breathing went shallow because the alternative was worse. Flash was already turning the corner. He hadn't noticed.
"Peter?"
Liz Allan. Three steps behind him. Textbook against her chest, hair pulled back. The popular-girl composure had gone open and worried.
"I'm fine."
"You're gray."
"Naturally pale. It's a complexion."
Her hand came up toward his arm. Stopped. Hung there, fingers open, close enough to his sleeve that the warmth of her skin reached him without the touch. Her mouth opened and closed and she looked at the hand and pulled it back against the textbook.
"If you need anything-"
"I'm good. Thanks, Liz."
She walked away. Looked back once at the end of the hallway. Peter peeled his hand off the locker and went to third period.
The library smelled like old paper and carpet cleaner. Peter sat down across from Jessica Jones and the act of sitting put pressure on his ribs and he winced. He tried to turn it into a stretch. It didn't work.
Jessica was reading. Her corner, her hoodie, the bag on the chair next to her. She didn't look up.
Five minutes. Calculus homework. His left side was a separate project from the calculus and neither was going well because the library chairs didn't have lumbar support and every position was a negotiation with his skeleton.
"You move like my foster father after he fell off the roof."
He looked up. Jessica was still reading. She hadn't turned a page in a while.
"Mr. Campbell." The name came out careful. She was placing it between them on the table instead of throwing it. "He was fixing shingles and he slipped. Cracked two ribs. He walked like that for three weeks. The careful walking. Where you're planning each step so nothing shifts."
Peter held still. Jessica Jones had just said more words in thirty seconds than she had in any conversation since he'd started sitting in this library.
"He was fine," she said. "It just took a while."
She went back to reading. The page she turned to was the same one she'd been on.
"Thanks, Jessica."
A sound that might have been acknowledgment. He went back to calculus. Outside the window a maintenance worker was pressure-washing the sidewalk and the sound was distant and steady and neither of them mentioned it.
He walked to the Bugle after school. Twelve blocks. His stride was shorter and every crosswalk involved standing still while his ribs settled into whatever position hurt the least, which was none of them. The afternoon was overcast, October grey, and a man on the corner of 39th was selling roasted nuts from a cart and the smell was warm and sweet and Peter's stomach wanted to stop but his ribs wanted to keep moving and his ribs won.
Betty was at her desk. Color-coded filing, coffee ring, typing fast with her shoulders pulled up near her ears. JJJ had been on one today. The office smelled like cigar smoke and toner.
"Hey."
She looked up. Her eyes went down his body and back, fast. She'd mapped his photos against police dispatch times.
"You're moving stiff."
"Skateboarding." Too fast. Rehearsed. He heard it land wrong.
"You don't skateboard, Peter."
"I tried. It went badly."
Her hand came up off the desk. Moved toward his arm. The same arm she'd touched three weeks ago when she'd handed him the payment envelope and her fingers had stayed a beat longer than the envelope required. Her hand got close and she looked at it and pulled it back to the desk. Her jaw worked once.
"There's an envelope for you. Back table."
"Thanks, Betty."
He got the envelope. Cash for last week's photos. Jameson didn't believe in direct deposit for freelancers he could fire without paperwork.
The editorial on JJJ's desk was face-up. He read it upside down walking past. RECKLESS VIGILANTE COSTS CITY $200,000. A SHIELD quote in the third paragraph: "SHIELD had no comment on the enhanced individual involved in Saturday's incident."
No comment meant they were watching. A file somewhere with his name on it, getting thicker.
He pocketed the cash and left. Betty was typing. Her shoulders were still up.
MJ was at the fence.
Arms folded. Facing the direction he'd come from. She'd been facing that direction before he turned the corner, which meant she'd been standing there waiting and she wanted him to know she'd been standing there waiting. Her hair was down and the wind had been at it and she hadn't fixed it and MJ always fixed her hair.
Peter walked up the driveway. May had texted him to grab the mail. The mailbox was at the curb and bending to reach the slot loaded his left side and a hiss came through his teeth, small, involuntary, the kind of sound you can't take back once it's out.
MJ's eyes went narrow.
"Rough day?"
"Long walk from the subway."
"You're moving like a senior citizen, Tiger."
"I've been told I'm an old soul."
"You've been told a lot of things." She watched him hold the mail against his chest with his right hand while his left arm stayed pinned to his side. "You're also holding that mail like it weighs fifty pounds."
He started for the porch. MJ's hand came over the fence and caught his forearm. Her nails were painted dark red, chipped at the edges. Her fingers were cold from standing outside.
"Peter."
"Yeah?"
"What happened."
"Fell off my bike."
"You don't have a bike, Tiger."
She held his arm for another second. Her thumb pressed against the inside of his wrist. His pulse was there and she had to feel it.
Then she let go and reached over the fence and pulled up the hem of his untucked shirt. Fast. Before he could step back. The fabric came up past the waistband, past the edge of the ACE bandage, and the bruise was there. Wing-shaped. Purple at the center going blue-black. Yellow creeping outward. The I-beam imprint blurred by two days of swelling.
MJ's hand stopped moving. She held the shirt up and looked at the bruise.
She didn't say anything. The overcast sky made the bruise look worse, or maybe it just looked exactly as bad as it was and Peter had been lying to himself about the color.
Her other hand went flat against his stomach. Below the bruise. Bare skin where the rebar scrape had faded to a thin pink line. Her palm was warm and her fingers were cold and the combination went straight through him and his stomach muscles tightened under her hand and she felt them tighten because her eyes came up to his face.
Green eyes. The party-girl mask was gone. Her jaw was set and her eyes were wet and her hand was on his bare stomach and the fence was between them and his ribs hurt and her palm was warm.
"Peter." His name again. She said it like she was biting down on every other word she wanted to use instead.
She pulled her hand back. Her fingers were shaking. She looked at them and clenched her hand into a fist at her side.
"You're a terrible liar too."
Too. She'd been keeping a list.
She turned and went up her porch steps and the screen door closed behind her and Peter stood at the fence with his shirt still up and the bruise visible to anyone who looked at the Parker driveway on a Monday afternoon.
He pulled his shirt down.
The mail was still in his hand. Grocery circular. Electric bill. Insurance letter with a coffee ring from the mailman's cup. He went inside and put the mail on the kitchen table and sat on the couch, carefully, and looked at the ceiling.
His ribs hurt. MJ's hand had been warm on his stomach. She was next door and he couldn't explain any of it.
Ben came in from the garage with sawdust on his shoulders. He looked at Peter on the couch.
"Seven letters," Ben said. "'Endurance.' Starts with F."
Peter thought. "Fortify?"
"No." Ben shook his head. "I'll get it." He went to the kitchen. Poured coffee. Came back to the armchair with the crossword.
Outside, a lawn mower started up. Late for October. Somebody doing the last cut before winter.
Peter closed his eyes.