Lying Heart
Peter's picture makes the front page of the Daily Bugle the next morning. The headline underneath it reads: Spiderman—menace behind the robot attacks!, which should probably offend Peter a lot more, but he is somewhat relieved that this at least seems more like legitimate journalism than the three children he supposedly fathered. That is, until he turns to the style section, which boasts the delightful headline: Spiderman sex tape scandal!
"Ouch," he hears a voice behind him say.
He swivels in his chair and sees Gwen standing behind him, reading the headline.
"Are you—you're in this class?"
She sits down in the desk next to his and sets down her backpack. "It sure would seem that way," she says wryly.
Peter is so thrown off that it's a struggle to even remember what class they're in right now. He checks the chalkboard. Empty. He checks the book in his hand, the one he was perusing a few seconds before.
"You're taking cinematography?"
She shrugs. "I needed to take at least one class where I wasn't expected to have the periodic table memorized."
Peter himself really only chose this as a blow-off class, figuring his interest in photography would somewhat inspire him to pay attention here. Not to mention, at the time they did sign ups last semester he was only choosing classes he was almost entirely certain would help him avoid one Gwen Stacy. Now that she is sitting beside him with that panel of exposed skin between her mini-skirt and boots that he shouldn't be looking at, he isn't certain whether he wants to laugh or scream.
"Anyway, you should probably be more careful the next time you videotape your hookers," says Gwen, pointing to the paper still exposed on his lap.
Peter groans. "This is a disaster."
"Aw, come on. It's just one lousy paper."
"I'm working for them," Peter says grimly.
Gwen looks at the paper again. "You're working for the Daily Bugle?" she asks skeptically. "Since when?"
"Since yesterday," says Peter. He flips the paper back to the front page. "I did this. I mean, not the headline. The picture."
"I saw that in your room, I remember."
Peter unconsciously blushes, thinking of the awkward encounter that followed that in all-too-vivid detail.
"Yeah, well. The guy who runs the paper wanted it. I got two hundred bucks," Peter says, a hole practically burning in his pocket where he held the cash yesterday. He couldn't believe it, how easy it was. Jameson wrote a receipt, told him to hand it to the lady at the front, and just like that there were four fifty dollar bills in Peter's pocket. He honestly could say he'd never even owned a fifty dollar bill, let alone carried an entire two hundred dollars in his pocket all at once. He had an irrational fear he might get jumped on the way back to Queens and lose it all, but then he remembered that he had his abilities back, and felt even more smug about the money than before.
Of course, he'd gone straight home and hidden it in his closet so he wouldn't spend it on anything stupid. Like more spandex.
"Two hundred bucks?"
"Yeah," Peter says, still feeling pretty good about himself.
He hasn't seen such condescending pity in someone's eyes since he watched Flash tell a bunch of second graders Santa wasn't real. "Peter," says Gwen, shaking her head. "That's chump change."
"What? No, it's not," says Peter defensively.
"For a picture like this, it is. Do you know what people are willing to spend to publish a decent photograph of Spiderman?" she asks. "A heck of a lot more than two hundred dollars."
Peter shoves the newspaper back into his backpack with a little more force than necessary. "Well it doesn't really matter anyway, I already sold it," he says as he jams it in.
He freezes when he feels the skin of her hand on his. She is reaching into his backpack, a rather forward gesture that should concern him to some degree, but he is so fixated by the graze of her hand against his that it's hard to think of anything else. Even after she pulls away, having grabbed something out of his books, he is still reliving the accidental moment over and over again.
It's his camera she's holding. She looks up at him, grinning crookedly. "I've got an idea."
"Stop being so bashful. You've got a mask over your face," calls Gwen, who is currently squinting and holding Peter's camera up to her face. He raises his eyebrows at her, then remembers that she can't see him, so he swings over to the fire escape where she is currently perched trying to take a decent shot of him.
"I'm not," says Peter, even though he is. Somehow all the web-slinging and wall-climbing that comes as second nature in any other situation becomes a struggle when Gwen is scrutinizing his every move through a camera lens, although he couldn't tell her that. "I'm probably just, you know. Rusty. Just got these abilities back."
He isn't rusty, not by a long shot, if last night proved anything—he stopped two carjackings, a bank robbery, and diffused a hostage situation on a roof, all in one night. And for once, nobody even managed to punch him in the face. Peter is certainly a lot of things right now—embarrassed, awkward, a little bit happy—but definitely not rusty.
Gwen pulls the camera away from her face. "I probably didn't get any really great shots. Try that thing again, that one where you were slinging webs out of both hands down the alley, it looked pretty cool but I think I missed the shot by like a mile."
"Go easy on yourself, it's your first time," he says, with joking condescension.
"Oh, please, Parker, I was just being modest. These shots are so good I could sell them and move into a penthouse with my fifty percent cut of the earnings."
"Fifty percent, huh?"
"Am I not the ones taking the shots?"
"Yeah, but I'm the one flying around like an idiot in a full spandex suit who's going to have to re-crop and edit all your shots later."
She swats at the air near him playfully. "Get back to business, bug boy."
He hangs his head like a scolded child but obeys, swinging up a little higher because he knows the angle will be better from there. He watches her, waits to make sure that he's ready before he slings the webs and tears off into the middle of the empty alley. It's sweet, how hard she seems to be concentrating, and the sight of Gwen Stacy holding his camera up to her face almost seems like a postcard from a happier time, before they lost people they cared about, before they ever got caught up in this mess. Not for the first time this afternoon he's glad that the mask is on, because he thinks between the absent-minded grinning and accidental blushing every time they banter he would make a total fool of himself.
He swings toward her and pulls of his mask. "Got it?"
"Dunno," she says, taking a step back as if considering the light.
Peter notices she's about to lose her balance on the fire escape before she does. She opens her mouth to squeal as she topples, but he deftly grabs her with one arm, halting her fall.
"Oh," she manages. "Thanks."
They haven't been this close since New Year's. She is pressed up against him, his arm still wrapped around her waist, her eyes staring at him in hesitation. He wonders what she's thinking about. He wonders if it's Richard. He loosens his grip on her slightly, expecting her to step back, but she doesn't—before he can figure out what this means, her eyes lock on something behind him and grow wide.
Peter turns around, following her gaze. There's a huge cloud of thick, dark smoke on New York's skyline. He turns to Gwen, his face already apologetic.
She offers him a little smile. "What are you waiting for?"
He tightens his grip around her again, locks a biocable onto the fire escape, and sets Gwen gently on the ground. "I don't want to just leave you here," he says, looking around the abandoned alley.
"Let's get out to the street, then, I'll be fine."
She takes off running in those ridiculously tall boots and he follows her until they reach some form of civilization again, the kind where there is a subway stop in sight and most of the people are minding their own business. He can't remember when he put his mask back on but he's ready to go. He starts lifting his arm to sling a biocable, but Gwen grabs it first.
"Hey," she says, knocking him out of autopilot. "Stay safe."
He nods slightly, suppressing the inexplicable, demanding urge to kiss her before he flies off. But even if the promise to her father wasn't enough to halt him, or the fact that she may or may not still be dating Richard, he will never be stupid enough to publicly acknowledge her and put her in danger by associating her with the infamous web-crawler.
He feels bad about slinging a web and soaring upward without another word, but he knows that she understands.
It doesn't take very long to reach the building producing the enormous clouds of smog. At first Peter can't help but wonder if it's another terrorist attack, but by the time he reaches it he sees that it's a localized part of the building that's burning and there doesn't seem to be any impact points. By the way the windows are shattered in a particular place around the twentieth floor, Peter guesses that that's where the fire started. What he can't explain is how it's spreading so fast.
On the ground there are already five fire trucks and by the sound of it, more are coming. Peter doesn't see any police—and even if he did, he doubts that they'd shoot at him under the circumstances.
He scans the area where the windows are smashed and the flames are rising the highest, but a few floors above them he sees a woman holding a toddler standing at her window and waving her arms to get Peter's attention. He swings over to the window with ease, trying to hold his breath against the onslaught of smoke, and motions for her to back up so he can bust her window open. Once he's sure it's all clear, he makes sure the mother's grip on her son is secure, grabs her, and latches a biocable to the window sill.
On his way down he hears something explode, yet again from the source where the windows were all smashed. Peter grits his teeth, sets the pair on the ground, and swings back up, determined to figure out whatever it is setting off the blasts—this last one almost unleveled the whole floor, and if he can stop it from happening again he might be able to stop the building from collapsing before everyone gets out.
He sees other people trapped in windows, though, and he can't ignore them. He figures he can get two at a time, so for another ten minutes he tries his best to hold his breath and squint through the smoke as he swings another seven people down to the ground and toward the emergency vehicles.
When he's certain nobody else is trapped in their apartments, he swings into the open windows of the room that he suspects is the source of all the explosions. As soon as he gets inside he realizes it's a lost cause, trying to fix anything in here—the smoke is practically black and he can't see a thing. He stumbles and gasps unintentionally, sucking the smoke into his lungs, and once he starts coughing he can't stop breathing it in.
At this point Peter accepts that he is in over his head. He can almost hear the man's choice words—stupid, reckless, thoughtless, among others—and at this moment he is inclined to agree. He turns back to the window, fully intending to leave, but something gives him pause.
If he isn't mistaken, it looks like in the next room there is a giant metal robot arm, one that, to Peter's horror, he recognizes all too well.
He is so preoccupied staring at it that when the next blast fires he only has enough time to look up and see the giant, burning panel of the ceiling just before it slams him to the ground.
I get it, I get it. All anyone really wants from me is to pulverize the bejeezus out of Peter. I will try and sneak some plot in between when I can, so please bear with me and eventually, together, we will all reach some form of the angst everyone is waiting for.
I need to go crawl into a warm hole now. I had to run half a mile back from work in the most torrential downpour ever. It was the kind of rain where you just have to laugh hysterically as you wait for the walk sign at the intersection because it was literally, like, thundering so loud you had to plug your ears and raining so hard that you couldn't see, so it was a fun little end of the day adventure. The best news is, I won't have to try half as hard to wash out the spit-up in my clothes today. It doesn't get much classier than this.