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Dear Reviewers,
Have you guys seen the new trailer yet? I've been FREAKING OUT and watching it OVER AND OVER. I would also like to make a vow to you: this story will be completed BEFORE Avengers: Infinity War comes out April 27. Ever since we first see Peter's spidey senses react in the first teaser trailer, I knew how I wanted to end this story, and I am writing that ending up for you all beautiful readers before you find yourselves in the theater ;)
If you've a mind to, please consider leaving me a review at the end ;)
Love,
Pip
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HELL'S KITCHEN
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Surveillance, surveillance, surveillance, I hum to myself. That's all I'm doing. That's what I'm committing to.
Stalking.
No, surveillance!
No, really, this is stalking, it really is.
Out of curiosity, I pause on the corner of a skyscraper, three hundred feet in the air and one hand pressed against it's cool, metallic, reflective side to keep from plummeting downward. I use the other hand to press the empty, spider-shaped pocket on my chest.
Within seconds, the tiny black drone - looking almost happy to see me - comes whirring out of the spilling, golden sunset to tuck its legs beneath him and click back into place in the suit.
"Whatchya got for me, Droney?" I ask.
"The drone followed Officer Cooper home," Karen replies. A small map blips and appears in the view of my lenses, with a little red marker to indicate the route he was taking. "He lives in an apartment complex not far from here. Should I calculate the fastest route for you?"
"No!" I shriek suddenly, nearly loosening my grip too soon on the building I'm clinging to. I'm one monkey suit, three biplanes, and a blond short of a King Kong poster. And King Kong is a… tragic hero sort of character. I don't plan on being one, doing the exact thing that instinct is screaming at me not to do.
"I'm going home, it's late," I say quickly.
Committing.
Committing to surveillance.
"I don't need to go to his home - I don't. I just… I just appreciate knowing where he lives, is all. I can warn Aunt May to avoid the area. And Ned. That's it. That's all I need."
That's not all I want.
"Certainly, Peter," Karen responds nicely. "I'll calculate the fastest route home for you."
Home tonight, I realize, being honest with myself. But tomorrow I'll be back.
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SCHOOL
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WHACK.
There's an explosion in my forehead and a stinging sensation. I lift my head instantaneously from the desk where I had, apparently, hit the front of my face from falling asleep, my head slipping out of my palm which I had strategically placed under my chin earlier.
No one seemed to notice the thump, except for Michelle, sitting beside me. I stare at our teacher for a moment with glazed-over eyes, blinking to wake myself up, rubbing at the tender spot now in the center of my forehead.
I feel MJ's stare and turn slightly, smirking at her. "I guess I'm sorta tired," I whisper.
"Yeah, uh," she says, her mouth twitching, overcoming laughter with an apologetic frown. "Yeah that was uh - my bad, definitely. My bad. Sorry."
"What?" I whisper, getting confused.
"You started to drift off," MJ admits. "You were resting your chin in your hand and I saw your eyes shut. I, uh… uh..."
"Out with it, Jones," I say, cutting off her inability to get to the point. I've been really trying with her - lately. Trying to exude the confidence that Spider-Man feels, offer the same sort of friendship and humor that Ned often supplies to me. Its hard, and I'm too socially awkward to be any good at it, but I'm trying.
To my surprise, my interruption makes her laugh outright, but quickly makes her face a mask of indifference when Mr. Harrington turns around from the front of the room, glaring for the noisemaker. When he finds none, he goes back to the board, calculating the top five equations seen in most competitions. I had them already solved on my notepad in front of me within five minutes of the drills. He's starting on number three.
"I bumped your wrist," MJ confesses in a whisper. "I was going to wake you up and… I knocked your arm right from under your head and then you face-planted." She fights back a smile again. "I feel sort of bad and I apologize… but that was some of the funniest shit I've seen all year."
"Heh heh heh," I let out an awkward laugh, trying to keep it quiet. "Apology accepted."
"Why're you so tired all the time?" MJ asks suddenly. "Don't you ever sleep?"
"I sleep when it's bedtime," I respond unhelpfully.
"Yeah, okay, what, are you five?" MJ replies with a cutting stare. I feel like she's reading my mind. It's uncomfortable. "When is bedtime?"
"I don't know… midnight?"
"You go to bed at midnight EVERY night?" MJ hisses.
Flash turns around in his seat and shushes her. MJ immediately snatches her long sleeve back, previously covering her hand, to reveal her middle finger pointed in Flash's direction. Flash makes an L sign on his forehead in my direction, with a sigh of disgust as he turns back in his seat.
"Not every night," I whisper back. "I do the internship after school every day and then I have homework. A lot of homework."
To her credit, Michelle looks slightly sympathetic, instead of her typical 'grow a pair' sort of response and classic eye-roll. "It's cool you do the thing for Stark Industries," she says quietly. "It'll probably look good on a resume." She picks at the tip of her pencil, and then adds a pair of sunglasses to her caricature of Abraham Lincoln. "You haven't been yourself lately."
"Haven't been myself?" I repeat uncomfortably, giving a false snicker again. "What do you mean?"
"Nice try. The way you've been acting the last two weeks."
"How… what did I do differently the last two weeks?"
I didn't want to think about what happened two weeks ago. Or what might happen tonight.
"Oh, you know, just the twitchy jumpiness, big circles under your eyes, freaking out at Flash, zoning out…" MJ looks sharply at me. "Falling asleep in class."
I immediately break eye contact and look away. "It's been a rough few weeks, I guess. Didn't realize it was so obvious."
"You're not that good of an actor."
I give her a half smile. "You never know."
"I do," she goes back to her sketch, adding a Long Island Iced Tea to Abraham's outstretched hand. "You're terrible."
I don't answer, but I smile at her, and shrug, pretending to take notes.
I don't need to take notes, I remember. I solved the equations already. Dang.
"Why don't we take a five minute break," Mr. Harrington turns around and glares towards the back row. "Eat your snacks… or… whatever."
The room erupts in an immediate hum of chatter. Ned looks like he's about to make a beeline in my direction, but Abe steps in front of him and immediately begins asking copious amounts of questions. Looks like Ned will be otherwise occupied for five minutes.
"So what happened?" Michelle persists.
"Why do you think it was something specific?" I reply.
"Why do you answer questions with another question?" She glowers at me. "Don't be an ass to me. I'm being… nice."
"Didn't mean to be… mean? Just… clarifying."
"I don't think there's a mean bone in your body. It's conversations you suck at."
"That's… fair."
It's not. I can be mean. I can be cruel. I could test just how cruel I could be against a subject unworthy of redemption… maybe tonight…
"I had the flu," I found myself saying. The same excuse we used for my absence. The pivotal absence, and the main reason I had been acting so weird. If I invented too many excuses or lied further, she may just call me out on bad acting again and then ask if I was lying about having the flu, too. If she started asking… I didn't know how to avoid her piercing suspicion and stick with the story.
"I knew that."
"I almost died," I choked out, then clamped my mouth shut.
Her eyes widened. "You what?"
"It was… a really, really bad case of the flu," I lied again. "Like… really bad. I was in the hospital for two days."
"What the hell?" MJ breaks the tip of her pencil, sighs with frustration, and sticks it into the sharpener she has sitting next to her weird, putty-looking eraser. "Why didn't Ned tell me?"
I blanked. Shit. Tell one lie, then you have to tell a million more to cover it up… "My phone died," I began. MJ looked as if she was about to protest the excuse. "And Aunt May was so freaked out she forgot to tell Ned," I continue, feeling relieved when her gaze softens. "It wasn't until I was lucid enough to borrow her phone that I was able to let him know. I didn't have your number. I'm sorry."
"Ah," she says, reaching over and scratching her number onto my notepaper with her pencil. It still begs the question why Ned wouldn't tell her, and maybe it hurts, but she drops it. "There," she says. "Now that won't happen again. You know," she looks up at me with a critical, and potentially disbelieving, expression. "Just in case you end up dying in a hospital again without your friends."
Again with the friends thing. I'm fairly certain she means it.
I try not to blush, smiling at her. "Th-thanks. Yeah. I'll call you."
She raises her eyebrows.
"If… I'm, you know, dying."
"Or if you want to… talk about homework?" she supplies. "The far more logical and likely scenario?"
"Oh. Yeah. That. Definitely the uh, preferable scenario."
"Break time is over," Mr. Harrington calls out in an exhausted monotone.
"That was like, thirty seconds," Ned protests loudly, casting an annoyed look in my direction.
"We can… keep having a nice long break," Mr. Harrington says, as if reading a really depressing headline from a newspaper, "or I can accidentally schedule another decathlon drill next Saturday too. Your choice."
Ned thumps into his chair and rattles the desk. "Yeah, the break was nice," he exclaims with exaggerated cheerfulness.
I look up train departures on my phone from stations near Midtown High to Hell's Kitchen.
"Missed opportunity for another nap," MJ says to me in a clipped tone.
I give her an overly dramatic sigh, quickly turning off my phone.
"At least go to bed before midnight tonight, yeah?" she adds.
I nod, feeling myself growing cold towards the conversation, pretending to become distracted with notetaking again. I doodle a circle around her phone number with a few sweeps. "Yeah," I say quietly, as Mr. Harrington taps a pen loudly for attention. "Definitely before midnight."
Per my Droney's read outs, I should be able to track down Officer Casey Cooper when he gets off work no later than… eight thirty p.m.
MJ starts sketching again. In addition to the sunglasses and alcoholic beverage, she labels the bust of Abraham Lincoln with a scroll that says "USA". Then, in a dialogue bubble, she writes
Ah, freedom. Now I can take a 99 year vacation.
I did the math in my head - the Civil War ended in 1865, and 99 years later was 1964. For a moment, I forget Casey Cooper, and I stare at her, then her drawing, and then back again.
"What?" Michelle hisses, looking annoyed.
"Have I ever told you that you're a really… really good artist?" I whisper.
She starts to roll her eyes again.
"No, no, I mean it," I say quickly. "You're the most amazing artist I think I've ever seen."
"It doesn't even look like him," Michelle shrugs, showing me the photo on her phone that she was using as a reference.
"I know people say that all the time just because they can't do it themselves," I say. "But I'm serious. You're… really good."
She looks at me, realizing that I'm being completely sincere. She starts to smile and say thank… and then pauses and looks back at the drawing. "I am pretty good at noses," she says instead, brushing it off.
"You're amazing," I say.
She glances at me, waiting for me to finish with "at drawing noses".
But the bravery of Spider-Man's quippy - and at times, flirty - verbal tendencies take over. I bite my lip to keep myself from back-peddling when my confidence fizzles out.
"Really… really amazing," I say again. Just so she knows I mean it.
I let it sit.
She tries to scoff and laugh it off, as quietly as possible, and she seems like she's… blushing? Blushing without the color. She's not physically blushing - but - she's acting like she's blushing. She tucks her ear slightly into her shoulder, hiding a smile - choosing to end her scoff with a polite, short, "Uh… thanks, Peter," and returns right to drawing.
I stutter and stumble my way through conversations all the time - this one would be different. I needed it to be different.
Just in case something happens today.
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HELL'S KITCHEN
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Office Casey Cooper is parked on the street.
It's a civilian car, not a marked patrol car. He's loading a box into the trunk labeled Donate. The irony he was giving away old possessions to those in need… I don't - can't - understand it.
I wonder if I am literally the only one who knows he's a monster?
Last night, Droney had followed Cooper home. I knew where he lived now. I'd be doing the right thing - explaining subtly to Ned, maybe even Michelle, that they needed to avoid the area if they could. May would know the full story. I promised I'd be honest, so I would tell her not to ever go close to his address. But I also wasn't going to be telling her that I was going back to Hell's kitchen - again.
Almost every night this week. And for what?
Nothing.
I only had a little bit of time after school, but tomorrow - maybe after the Decathlon drill that Mr. Harrington scheduled - maybe a LONGER surveillance would be in order. You know, follow the monster around all day. Track him. Feel him out. See where he goes.
See if he ends up somewhere alone.
Maybe I'd… talk to him.
I crawl over the side of the building, lenses narrowing in on Cooper. He's running errands right now. He's stopped at a post office, picked up the box labeled donate at the station, returned the Redbox movie.
"Your breathing is shallow," Karen says.
"I'm anxious," I hiss back. "So let up, already!" I pull back into the alcove on the side of the building and try to take a deep, fulfilling breath. When it seems like I have satisfactory amount of air, I look back into the street.
He's gone.
I feel my heart drop in my chest. His car is still there. Where did he go? What if he pulled one of those guns from Toomes from his trunk - and saw me - maybe heard me -
I jerk back into the wall and press myself into the shadow. My breath comes in short, quick gasps again.
"Hey!" I hear his voice call - across the street - just below me. "What are you doing?"
My insides shudder with terror at the sound of it.
"HEY SPIDER-MAN, WAKE UP! I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS FOR YOU!"
The convoluted flashbacks of him shouting at me clatter loudly enough in my head for me to think he's spotted me and he's calling me out. And I'm cornered.
"Hey - yeah, I'm just buying a paper right now, why?" I hear the actual clatter of a paper machine on the sidewalk below me. The slip of small change through the slot and the turn of the knob. He retrieves a paper and steps back into my line of sight, tucking a cell between his ear and shoulder as he relocks the newspaper stand. "What do you mean you have more work? What sort of work? The last one was bad enough even without your boss's damn incentive."
I gulp air with relief.
"A money drop?" Officer Casey Cooper repeats, lowering his voice to a whisper. There's no one on the street but me and him. It's late evening and all the heavy foot traffic is half a block away. "Doable. Way more doable. Let's discuss the details later when I'm not in the middle of the street."
A pause.
"Well, you know, I don't really like you either, so I guess we're even then. Goodbye."
He hangs up the phone with finality, just as the line in my suit starts to blip.
"Incoming call from Tony Stark," Karen says cheerfully.
I can't answer. Cooper is putting his phone away and walking back to the driver's side door.
"Answering call," Karen continues.
Still can't answer out loud - he would hear me - he's unlocking the driver's side door -
"Hello, Mr. Parker," Mr. Stark's facetime call appears in my lenses. I know he can't see my face right now, but his eyes narrow when I don't immediately respond.
Cooper is dropping his keys, fumbling loudly.
"Helloooooo?" Mr. Stark trails on.
Cooper is cursing as he drops the keys a second time… what is wrong with this guy? I thought cops were beyond such normal human trivialities such as clumsiness.
"I can hear you breathing," Mr. Stark says, rather mockingly.
Cooper slides into the driver's seat and shuts the door. I hold my breath unwittingly, waiting for the engine to start.
Mr. Stark's blink in surprise. "Uh - okay - now - no breathing. Peter?"
I say nothing.
"Karen, send me the stats, please and thank you."
The engine roars to life, and he begins to reverse out of his place by the sidewalk.
I let out a loud breath and gasp loudly, "It's kinda hard to answer when I'm in the middle of a stake out and the perp is standing right below me!" I exclaim.
"Oh there's a perp now, is there?" Mr. Stark looks amused, and relieved.
"Yes, yes, there's a perp!" I say frustratingly, watching his car back out of the side street, returning to regular traffic around the corner. In a moment, he's gone. "A criminal, a bad guy, whatever. If I'd said anything I would've blown my cover."
"This stake-out you're on, I don't suppose this is authorized by any law enforcement?" Mr. Stark asks. He's making fun of me.
"No, no, it's not, thank you," I reply joltingly, crawling out of the alcove for the boarded up window, and pull myself hand-over-hand to get to the rooftop. "Just an ordinary thing. Like… a drug deal. Stopping a drug deal in progress, probably. No big deal. Just a normal, neighborhood…"
"And why is that neighborhood Hell's Kitchen?" Mr. Stark asks. "Are you intentionally the kind of kid who lays your hand on a stove to test if it's hot?"
"Uh - what? Huh? Mr. Stark, you're breaking up," I say quickly, leaping onto the roof. "You - might - I - it's - uh - talk - later!"
"I'm not breaking up," Karen says with some confusion.
"Traitor," I sigh.
"Nice try, kid," Mr. Stark purses his lips with some frustration, choosing his next words carefully. "I can't keep forcing you out of Hell's Kitchen every time you go there."
"So don't?" I try.
"You just need to figure out what the hell - no pun intended - you plan on doing if something goes wrong, and you're just the boy with a Wolf problem."
"Uh…" I try to remember the fairy tale and snicker. "Peter's angry grandpa wouldn't let him in the woods to kill the wolf but when he finally does, he saves the village."
Mr. Stark opens his mouth to reply, then shuts its again. "The boy who cried wolf, not Peter and the Wolf. Wrong story. Let's say you've been to Hell's Kitchen - oh, maybe twice. Three times. How do I know if the fourth or fifth is the time you need help?"
"Suit upgrades?" I offer meekly.
"You know what I mean," Mr. Stark says darkly. "This needs to not be a habit. Understand? This is not your jurisdiction. As long as a certain officer of the law is free - YOUR choice, NOT mine - you're to stay away from there. Again, your choice, not mine. Your choice comes with conditions. These are mine."
"Okay, okay!" I say rather defensively. Then I fight off a grin. "So… you weren't referring to the story about the angry grandpa not letting Peter into the woods to fight monsters?"
"This joke is not appreciated, firstly, I am not that old. Secondly, I'm not that angry, that's Banner's domain. Thirdly…"
I back peddle. "Sorry, Mr. Stark. Just trying to be funny."
"I need one more whiskey for age-jokes to be funny." But he IS laughing, regardless. "Get out of there. Go home. It's late. Please. Just - do me a solid, and figure things out. I'm not going to bust you every single time you're in Hell's Kitchen. But I need you to make some choices here and I'm going to give you the space to do it. Capiche?"
"Yeah. Capiche. And… thanks."
"What for?"
"For… looking out for me?"
"Huh. Well, yes. You're welcome." He clears his throat and blows out a puff of awkward air from his lips, like he doesn't know what to say next. "As for the other matter…"
I wait.
"Wednesday night."
"Oh," I reply in a small voice. "That was…"
"Rough, I know. It happens. It's happened to all of us. It's best not to dwell on it."
"But…"
"No buts, take it from someone who knows. If you stack the preventable deaths against yourself, they will always outweigh you, and always weigh you down. You can't measure your worth - or usefulness in this daily neighborhood stuff - by the failures. It doesn't work that way. I've been doing this since 2008, kid. You have to trust me on that."
I gulp and lean against an A/C exhaust. "Okay. Thanks."
"You'll learn," Mr. Stark says, looking away from his phone for a second. He looks sort of sad. "We all do. We all lose people. I have told only two or three people about this, but the first person I lost - within my first three minutes of being Iron-Man - I lost the man that saved my life. He was in captivity with me and," his voice gives out for a second and he waves his other hand. "You don't want to hear about that, you've had enough of that yourself, just on a shorter tenure," he clears his throat. "It defined what I did from that point on. But I didn't decide then that I didn't deserve to escape or change the way things in my life were going. If I had, I wouldn't be here. I would have given up."
I nod, and remember he can't see me nodding. "Whoa," is all I manage.
"Just take it one day at a time for now, Mr. Parker. We'll figure it out. K?"
"Uh huh - yeah. Okay."
"All right. I'm hanging up now. Godspeed."
"Yeah, you too. I mean. Thanks… and bye."
"Yup."
And he ends the call. I sigh, and I tap my chest for Droney to return.
With a buzz, Droney returned in about thirty seconds, tucking itself in with a click at my chest and a readout of further movement pops up.
Tonight was a fluke. Sorry, Mr. Stark. I'm still coming back tomorrow. But this time, Droney isn't doing most of the work.
Tomorrow I'm following him home.
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Bonus Features
Feel free to skip to the end to bypass PERSONAL review replies, a 'coming soon' tag, and instagram/Youtube information, etc, and head straight on down to the end of the document. Your reviews are appreciated!
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Your Beta: Queen of Crystallopia
As usual, she is better than best - she's CRAZY AMAZING. Send her your thanks for being my Jiminy Cricket when I write, and for keeping me inspired by always writing such amazing stories herself. Be sure to check out her books, PAINT IT BLACK and the sequel, SILENT NIGHT, for the most action-packed, character-accurate stories on this site!
I made a fan trailer for her first book PAINT IT BLACK and posted it on YouTube. It's unlisted to keep YouTube from deleting it. I'd love for you to see it! Since fan fiction hates it when we try to share links, you can try using the link below. Just take out the spaces and parenthesis and replace the slash with an actual slash.
(www) . (youtube) . com (slash) (watch?v=TqWlBlVA9Q4&lc=)
OR, you can direct message myself or Queen of Crystallopia on instagram (insta handles shared on respective profile pages) and we'll send a link!
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We're on Ao3 now!
Your beta and I are both on "Archive of Our Own" now, you can find her under Crystallopianqueen and me under Pippin_Strange
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REVIEW REPLIES
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Shoyzz: Thank you so much for your sweet review! Your art on instagram has been giving me life. You're amazing. I might have a one-shot coming up featuring more Peter and Tony in a sort of AU internship interview scenario. We'll see ;) I'm committed to finishing this one REALLY soon! Only two more chapters to go I think...
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COMING SOON...
Might as well of sold your soul to the devil, Peter, because you seem to live in Hell's Kitchen now... o_O
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Instagram handles!
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For fanfiction and NERD STUFF: pippin_strange
For life, drawings, and more: myapapaya_adventures
For my epic Dungeons & Dragons group: thegildedlillyparty
For my weird obsessions: myas_haunted_things
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