New Rules
Felicia had started making him take the mask off.
Every night on the fire escape, first thing. "Take it off." And he'd pull it over his head and the November air would hit his face and she'd look at him. She did this every time, her eyes moving over his features like she was checking it was still the same face.
Tonight she was in civilian clothes. Jeans, the jacket from the subway morning, white hair loose. The thermos was balanced on the railing. Coffee.
He pulled the mask off. She looked. Her eyes found his cheekbone.
"New one," she said.
He touched it. Purple-green at the edges. A guy with a crowbar on Thirty-Eighth, Tuesday. Purse-snatching that went sideways when the snatcher had friends.
"You're going to get killed doing this," she said.
"Hasn't happened yet."
"'Yet' is doing a lot of work in that sentence."
He grinned. She didn't.
"I'm serious. You fight people who can fly. Your suit is made of fabric."
"It's a polyester blend. Very durable."
"Peter."
"What?"
"You need better gear." She picked up the thermos. Drank. "I'm going to upgrade your costume."
"You're a thief, not a tailor."
"I'm resourceful." She'd already decided. "I know materials. I know armor. The Black Fox has contacts in the fabric trade. Ballistic weave, Kevlar threading, impact-dispersal mesh. I can source something that won't tear when someone puts a crowbar through it."
"You've been thinking about this."
"I've been thinking about you coming home in pieces." She put the thermos down. "A kid in a polyester suit fighting adults with weapons and going home to his aunt with bruises he has to lie about."
"I'm not a kid."
"You're in high school, Peter."
"And you live in a squat with stolen paintings."
"That's different."
"How?"
"Because I'm not the one jumping off buildings."
A window opened in the apartment below them. Music. Someone playing guitar, the same three chords, badly. The window stayed open.
"You have a nice face," Felicia said.
"Thanks?"
"I'm mad about that."
"Why?"
"Because it would've been easier if you were ugly."
She reached out. Her fingers were cold from the thermos. They traced the line of his jaw from his ear to his chin and her thumb found the bruise on his cheekbone and rested there. She was close and her eyes were green in the light from the apartment below and the guitar was playing a song Peter almost recognized.
She kissed his cheekbone. Light. Her lips cold. Then his mouth. Light. Then her hand went to the back of his neck and pulled and it wasn't light anymore.
He kissed her back. His hand found her waist and she leaned into him and the fire escape groaned and the thermos tipped and she caught it without breaking the kiss. She was kissing him and saving a thermos of coffee at the same time and the guitar downstairs kept going and November was cold everywhere they weren't touching.
She pulled back. Her lips were warm now.
"New rules," she said.
"Okay."
"One. You tell me when you're hurt."
"Felicia-"
"Two. I'm upgrading your suit. Don't argue."
"I wasn't-"
"Three. You come back. Every time."
He looked at her. The guitar had stopped.
"I come back," he said.
"Say it like you mean it."
"I come back."
She held his eyes. Then she let go of his neck and picked up the thermos and drank like she hadn't just made him promise her something with his mask off on a fire escape in Chelsea.
"Good. Now put the mask back on. You look twelve without it."
"I do not look twelve."
"Thirteen. Tops."
The Daily Bugle smelled like newsprint and burnt coffee and the specific desperation of a newsroom that still believed in print. Peter came in through the side entrance at four with a roll of film in his jacket.
Betty was at her desk. She had the scheduling binder open but she wasn't scheduling. Behind her monitor, pinned to a corkboard, was a city map with colored pins. Red for confirmed Spider-Man sightings. Blue for confirmed photographs that Peter had sold to the Bugle. Yellow for unconfirmed reports from the tip line.
The red and blue pins clustered in the same neighborhoods. Midtown. Chelsea. Queens.
"It doesn't make sense," Betty said. She was talking to her coffee. "The photographs are always from the right angle. The photographer is either incredibly lucky or he knows where Spider-Man is going to be."
Peter put his film on the desk. "Maybe he's just fast."
"Nobody's that fast." She tapped a blue pin. "This one. The Vulture fight on West Forty-Third. The photo was taken from a rooftop two blocks east. The fight lasted four minutes. The photographer would have had to be on that rooftop before the fight started to get the angle."
"Maybe he heard sirens and ran."
"The first siren was two minutes after. The first photo was thirty seconds in." She looked at him. Brown eyes, sharp, and she was pulling a thread and not letting go. "The photographer knew."
Peter kept his face easy. Betty filed Jameson's correspondence and organized the photo morgue. She was also the woman who would be one of the best investigative reporters in New York if his foreknowledge was right. And right now she was holding the end of a thread that led to him.
"That's a big leap," he said.
"It's a pattern." She turned back to the map. Moved a yellow pin a quarter inch north, correcting against a report on her desk. "The photographer isn't on staff. He drops off film and picks up checks. Nobody here has seen him take a photo." She paused. "Have you met him? The photographer?"
"Once or twice. Quiet guy."
"Jameson says he's a high school student."
She said it like it was data. It was.
He took his film to the darkroom. His hands were steady. His pulse wasn't.
MJ caught him in the hallway between the darkroom and the exit.
She'd been picking up reception shifts after school. Phones, mail, filing the letters to the editor Jameson would never read. She was good at it the way she was good at most things, easily and without seeming to try.
She was holding a stack of envelopes and she stepped in front of him and her eyes were green and direct and the hallway was narrow and she was right there.
"Betty's asking questions about Spider-Man," she said. Low.
"She asks a lot of questions. She's curious."
"She has a map with pins in it." MJ shifted the envelopes to her other arm. "She's not curious. She's investigating."
He didn't say anything.
"I don't know what you're hiding, Tiger." She was looking at him and her hair smelled like the Bugle's cheap soap and under that his bathroom soap from the night she'd stayed over. "But people are going to find out if you're not careful."
"I'm careful," he said.
"No you're not." She walked past him. The envelopes, the hair, the soap. "You're a lot of things, Tiger. Careful isn't one of them."
She turned the corner.
Peter stood in the hallway. Betty's map was visible through the open door. Red, blue, yellow.
He walked out into November. A man on the sidewalk was trying to parallel park a van too big for the space. A woman on the corner was selling roasted nuts from a cart and the smoke smelled like sugar and salt.
His phone buzzed. Cindy: Where are you?
Bugle. On my way.
Three dots. Then: Bring food. I'm starving and your aunt's cooking is too good to eat alone.
The compass was at six. He smiled. The van was still trying to park.