Alright, so this won't be long cause I imagine it can be annoying seeing Author's Notes and no one pays much attention to them, but for those actually bothering to read em, I will say this:
1. First timer. Hi.
2. This story is central to Spider-Man-verse within the MCU and it'll eventually branch out further into MCU (and potentially farther) as the story progresses.
3. There will be crossovers, but I categorized this story as only Spider-Man since that's the world it all starts to take place in.
Enjoy.
"'Menace Strikes Again.'"
The headline screams at Peter, although Ava is unaware of the fact.
"You'd think the Bugle would have more important things to write about. This yellow journalism shit gets pretty tiring, pretty fast." Ava says, tossing the newspaper on the coffee table. Ava isn't exactly a groupie, but she sure as hell is quick to defend the masked hero.
This has become a rarity for Peter and Ava. There is hardly ever enough time for the two to spend time together, mostly because Peter works to support his aunt with the rent and the freelancing for the Bugle and his nerdy internships. Ava on the other hand, doesn't have much of a life except for her job at the diner and showing up to her classes. Sure, she goes to practically every party, but she's not exactly at the top of the social ladder. Or at the middle of it. Probably not even on the ladder at all. She just loves a good distraction.
"Why don't you marry the web slinger?" Peter teases, gathering his notes that are scattered across the bedroom floor. The hot headed girl was quick to slap her friend's arm (a little too forcefully).
"I wouldn't want to make you jealous." She says. Peter only scoffs in response. Ava rolls her eyes.
"Good luck on tomorrow's test." Peter says. He slings his bag over his back as he gets up from the floor. Lately, all of his movements have become more fluid. It reminds Ava of a dancer. Like a ballerina or something.
"Thanks. I would wish you luck, but you're a genius." She smiles, gathering the strands of unruly curls that fell out of her bun and tucking them back in.
"Oh Ava… you're totally right." The grin slapped on his face keeps Ava from swatting at him again. "You know, you look better with your hair down."
"I prefer practicality over aesthetic."
"Yeah, yeah. See ya tonight." And with that, he's out the door.
They live next door to each other, but it doesn't stop them from occasionally Skyping each other. Peter hates being lonely and Ava is haunted by her past. They discovered that it helps to be in each other's company.
"What are you reading?" Peter asks. Ava finishes the paragraph that she was on and looks over at the computer screen to see that Peter had paused his game and was staring at her.
"Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan." She responds, clearing her throat before continuing, "it's about the future course of space exploration."
"What'd you highlight?"
"Hm? Oh. Uh, alright. 'So the lovely comets that on occasion rouse us humans to wonder and to awe, that crater the surfaces of inner planets and outer moons, and that now and then endanger life on Earth would be unknown and unthreatening had Uranus and Neptune not grown to be giant worlds four and a half billion years ago.'" Ava looked back up to see that Peter still kept his eyes on her. "It's uh. It just reminded me of the last time I saw a comet. And I remember I made a wish and then it came true, but it wasn't as magical as I'd thought it be."
Peter had this strange smile, one that was gentle and careful. His brown eyes were strange too.
"How's MJ?" Ava quickly changes the subject, not being able to stand the look on Peter's face.
He finally did break away, going back to his game. "MJ's good. She's auditioning for this play in a few days and she's really confident that she'll get it.
"You know, you've become strangely addicted to space ever since The Accident."
"Everyone's looking for answers."
After that, the conversation faltered until they returned to their own separate activities. A lot of their Skype calls didn't consist of conversation, but rather silence. It was a nice way of coexisting.
Peter and Ava didn't meet until two years ago in the spring. The two were paired up in their chemistry class for a lab. They ended up failing thanks to Ava, but it was that failure that initiated the after school study sessions which blossomed into the two spending nearly every waking moment together. Ava was awkward and Peter was an asshole. They were like pickle and ice cream, two completely unrelated foods that would never taste good together. It still doesn't make much sense as to how they get along, actually.
Suddenly, Peter's body went stiff.
"What's wrong with your face? It looks like you're constipated, man." Ava laughs, but stops as soon as she realizes that something is seriously off about her friend. "Peter?"
"I gotta go." He rushes, abruptly ending the Skype call. Ava would consider this strange if this hasn't happened before, but lately it's becoming more and more frequent. Ever since his uncle had passed away, Peter's behavior had took a turn for the worse. It was understandable to be closed off after losing an important father figure, one that Ava also looked up to, but it seemed like every fiber of Peter's being was altered soon after the loss.
She could hear Peter trip outside as he struggled to get on his bike and peddle away.
"That's cool… catch ya later." Ava retorts, although it's only to herself at this point.
"Are you going crazy?"
Ava's little brother, Grant, peaked his head into her room. The unruly child was the spitting image of their father before his blood turned into alcohol. It was almost painful to look into those innocent gray eyes and see the devil taunt her, waiting to turn Grant into a monster too.
"Just a little bit, kiddo." Ava sighed, closing her laptop shut. Ava usually leaves it on so that Peter could call her back, but when weird episodes like that happens, she never hears from him until the following day at school.
It's then that Ava's father, Marcus, appears at the doorway, stumbling over his words so badly that they're not even coherent. Tonight, he's been downing a cheap bottle of wine. It's gotten to the point that Ava could decipher what type of mood her father is in depending on what's in his bear hands.
"I'll run the bath." She looks to Grant, meaning that it's time for him to go bed. They've developed a secret code told only by the way that they look at each other. Ava tries her hardest to keep the eleven year old from seeing too much ugly in the household.
While Grant runs off to his room, Ava guides her father to his own. The man stumbles along the way but at least his legs haven't given out yet.
"I used to be the best." Marcus gets out.
"Yes, dad." Ava nods.
"Hockey was my life." He continues, belching out the word "life." In any other given situation, that would've been laughable, but to Ava, this is all just pathetic.
"Did you know we was gonna name you Zelda? Ya mom thought the meaning behind it was beautiful, but I fucking saved you from humiliation. You're welcome." Marcus almost looked fond when he said these words, but Ava knew that any mention of her mother meant walking on eggshells.
Wordlessly, Ava helped her father get in the tub and turn on the water. Marcus's dirtied clothes stuck to his frail body. He's lost a lot of weight over the years. The weight has slowly started coming back though after the drinking got worse.
"I love you, Avery Douglass." Her father smiles up at her before finishing the bottle and dropping it on the carpeted floor.
Ava doesn't stay any longer than she needs to.
The next day, Ava doesn't see Peter at school. While Midtown is all abuzz about a flying goblin and a bloodied superhero, she spends her class periods worrying over Peter. During lunch, she scanned the cafeteria for his messy curls, but he wasn't there.
"Pete not here?" Harry Osborn inquires as Ava dumps her lunch tray on top of the table.
Harry and Ava never really ran in the same circles until she had befriended Peter. Ava never really expected to get along with a guy like Harry considering their upbringings, but thankfully there was never any prejudice between the two.
"Nope. He seemed off last night too." Ava says, taking measly bites from her tray.
"He told me he came down with something this morning." MJ Watson cut in, sitting down next to Harry. Almost immediately, any attention that Harry had given to Ava had shifted to MJ.
"That's a shame. I was looking forward to movie night." He says.
"I don't see why we still can't." MJ shrugs. "I'll be stopping by Pete's first, though. I want to drop off some soup and see how he's doing."
"Sounds like a plan." Harry smiles.
It's like I don't exist, Ava thinks to herself.
"Do you still need a ride then, MJ?" Ava speaks up, looking between the two friends.
"I could send in a car for you." Harry offers.
"That's okay, playboy," MJ laughs, "It's easier anyways if Ava takes me considering we live right down the street from each other."
MJ and Ava have been friends since elementary school. Before Peter, MJ's house was a safe haven for her. It was only MJ and her mom, but they were the first people to accept Ava as family. MJ's mother oftentimes watches Grant when Ava gets called in for work. Grant even secretly considers her as his mother although the one time he voiced this, Ava told him to never say that again.
Lunch went by pretty fast once Ava was engaged in conversation with two of the three of her closest friends. If only the other hadn't ditched. Ava knows a lie when she hears one, but it was best to not bring that to MJ's attention. For whatever reason it was, it must be a good one as to why Peter had lied to his girlfriend.
After the final bell rang, Ava rushed to her car and cranked up the heat as far as it could go whilst waiting for MJ. As much as Ava loves winter, she also can't stand it.
"Hey, sorry, Harry needed some help with AP Chem." MJ apologizes as she gets in the passenger seat.
The car ride back home isn't filled with much conversation, but instead, obnoxious singing.
Once Ava parks her Chevelle SS on MJ's driveway, the latter makes a mad dash to the front door and quickly grabs the soup she had made for Peter. Ava takes her brown hair out of the bun it had been in all day and shakes it out, trying to make it look less like a birds nest while leaning against the black automobile.
"I'll kill him if he doesn't eat this." MJ says, coming back out and already zooming down the driveway.
"That might be what kills him." Ava jokes.
It was Peter's Aunt May who answered the door upon the red head's wild knocking.
"Oh, what a nice surprise!" Aunt May smiled, welcoming the two girls into the Parker household. "And so nice of you young ladies to bring Peter chicken noodle soup! He's been holed up in his room all day trying to sleep the fever off."
"Is there any improvement?" Ava asks.
"I'm sure he'll feel better by tomorrow." Aunt May responds.
MJ hands her the container and heads up the stairs to Peter's bedroom. Ava follows, taking her time as she admires the picture frames on the walls. There's one of when Peter was a baby, giving a toothy grin as he's being held by his parents, another of when he was six and working on a school project with his Uncle Ben, twelve and proudly displaying the trophy he and Harry had won in the science fair project, fifteen and all lanky limbs awkwardly having one arm draped over a fifteen year old girl with pale skin stretched over her own pair of lanky limbs and a mop of curls resting on her head, seventeen and grown with an outstretched arm holding the camera so that he could get his three friends in the picture. The last picture was new. Ava recognizes how much all of them had changed. Peter is no longer lanky, but lean; MJ lost the knobby knees and instead gained stunning model legs; Harry traded the Captain America shirts and the cow lick for high end clothing and tastefully styled hair; Ava may still have frizz, but her face had lost its fat and instead gained it in her body, no more looking like she was mere skin and bones.
Snapping out of it, Ava continued up the steps. MJ knocked on the door and Peter coughed roughly in response.
"I'm fine, Aunt May!" Peter called out hoarsely.
"It's MJ and Ava." The redhead responded, looking at Ava with these big and sad blue eyes. "Can we come in?"
"Oh, uh. Not a good idea." He says before falling into a fit of coughs. "I'm, uh… indecent? And I don't wanna get you guys sick, it's best that I stay in quarantine."
"Right, okay" MJ says, "Well, we better get going now, Pete, but I better see you at school tomorrow! And eat the soup I made you! Love you, Tiger."
"Love you too, Mary Jane." They could just hear the smile on his face when he said that.
MJ is already down the stairs, but Ava doesn't show any signs of following her friend just yet. Ava doesn't bother with proper mannerisms and instead barges into Peter's room.
For once, the room is a pigsty. The teen is pretty good at keeping an impeccable living space, but there's dirty clothes littering the floor and papers strewn about with complicated equations covering every corner of them and crushed cans of energy drinks. Peter himself is tucked into bed, the covers hiding his whole entire body upon Ava walking in.
"Avery!" Peter exclaims.
"You're a shit liar," is all Ava says to him.
"I have no idea what you're talking about." He states, voice slightly muffled from being covered by his blankets.
Ava doesn't bother with getting into a back-and-forth with him so she stands over his bed and yanks at his covers. Peter has an iron grip on them, causing one sheet to actually tear.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Peter Benjamin! Just let me see your face!" Ava hissed, tugging one more time before Peter gives up. It practically knocks Ava off her feet and she staggers back a few steps. Either way, she's defiant in being the one that won. That was, until she got a good look at Peter's face. "Oh shit," She whispers, "What the hell happened, Peter?"
Peter's face looked like it went through a war zone. He had small cuts on his left eyebrow, colorful bruises on his right eye and cheek, a split lip, and a bruised neck from what seems like an attempt was made at choking him.
"Symptoms of the flu?" He chuckled weakly, wincing afterwards. The hoarseness of his voice came from the damage done to his throat.
The terrifying part is that this isn't the first time Ava has seen Peter beaten up, but it's never been this bad. She fears what the rest of his body looks like.
"Peter, what are you getting yourself into? The fucking Fight Club?" Ava throws her hands up in the air, exasperated. "For whatever reason, you're even lying to MJ about this and if I don't go downstairs in the next five seconds she'll come up here, so we're gonna talk about this later."
"Thank you." He says.
"Oh, I'm not doing it to save you from getting more bruises, I'm doing it so she doesn't end up going to jail." Ava nods, walking out of his room and carefully closing the door behind her despite wanting to slam it. Her hands are shaking so badly that she shoves them in her pockets to try to conceal them.
Once Ava got downstairs and was met with MJ's questioning look, she merely responded with, "I tried to lure the turtle out of his shell, but to no avail. Let's go."
They bid Aunt May a good night and walk across the Parker's lawn to quickly get to Ava's car.
The girls begin to discuss what movie they should watch at Harry's on the way there considering there was no way in hell that they would allow Harry to pick a movie unless they wanted to turn it into a snoozefest. In the back of her mind, she couldn't stop thinking about the large hand shaped bruise on Peter's neck.
Movie night ended in the three passed out on the couch, limbs intertwined together in some way. It was Ava that woke up at nearly two in the morning.
Detaching herself from Harry and MJ, she walked to the kitchen to get herself a glass of water. The cool drink was refreshing, but it also seemed to help jog her memory of what occurred in the previous hours. Ava checks her phone and sees that Peter had left her a text message.
Are you up?
It was sent over a little of an hour ago.
Am now. I'm coming over and we're talking.
Peter responded in seconds: Wtf no. Don't.
Shut up, yes. Be there in thirty.
Ava leaves a note on the counter saying that her father had called her to come back home so as not to worry Harry and MJ when they woke up for school. It wasn't rare for these sleepovers to happen and her father yelling at her to come back home so it seems like a credible enough lie. Once, he even showed up at the doorstep, practically dragging Ava out of the impressive house.
Getting to Peter's house faster than expected, she notices him on the roof as she gets out the car. He doesn't look her way when hearing the car door shut, although he did slightly tense up before relaxing his limbs again.
Ava unlocks the front door with her own spare key that Aunt May had given her, trying her best to not make any noise. The house is so peaceful all of the time. It's a stark contrast to Ava's own home.
She makes her way to Peter's room and shimmies her way out of the narrow window and climbs onto the roof. It's a miracle as to how Peter and Ava can still manage to get up there without getting stuck now that they're older. Finding solace by being up on the roof was always something Peter had done and Ava eventually ended up accompanying him once they started talking.
Once Ava settles down next to Peter and a few moments of silence has passed, she decides to speak up. "Is the internship at Oscorp even real?"
"Avery. Yes." Peter looks over at her, bewildered. "Why would you ask that?"
"Because I don't know what's going on, Peter! You'll disappear and then suddenly reappear except that this time, your body is just covered in cuts and bruises and one time, burn marks. Don't think I didn't notice, I did.
"I know that things have tough for you this year-"
"Don't."
"But whatever it is you're getting into isn't worth it, Peter."
"You don't understand."
"No, no I don't. Help me understand. You're lying to me, to Harry, to MJ, to your aunt… You don't have to go through this alone. I was alone when my mom died and it sucked. Hell, you were the only person there for me after Elanore… let someone be there for you."
Peter didn't respond for a long time it seemed like, just staring off into the distance trying to get his thoughts together. "Avery, I… I just. I can't."
"Yes, you can. Tell me."
"I can't. I really can't tell you." His brown eyes looked at Ava pleadingly. Ava knows that pushing Peter for the truth would go nowhere.
"Whatever, Petey. I guess this was a waste of time." Ava sighed, moving to get down from the roof, but Peter held onto her forearm.
"Stay."
The two remained silent, Peter resting against Ava as she held him. Eventually, the two found themselves in Peter's bedroom watching Your Lie In April until they passed out. If it wasn't for Ava's alarm on her phone going off, they never would've woken up for school one hour later.