Work Text:
Maybe.
Flash stares at the word he's just scrawled. Then he looks at the question.
“Describe the chemical process that takes place when Ethanol is subjected to...”
He erases Maybe and circles a random letter.
Peter is sitting (slouching?) two desks away. Flash glances over in time to see him tipping forward and, yep, there he goes, slumping over his test with his hood pulled over his eyes. Flash clears his throat, and, when that doesn't work, looks for something to throw.
The teacher gets there first.
"Parker!"
- - -
“He's failing chemistry,” Flash says.
“So are you,” says Gwen, not looking up from her notes.
“Yeah, but he's,” Flash hesitates. Brilliant? A certifiable genius? “Not me.”
Gwen just shrugs. She's biting her bottom lip, and frowning at her notes, which is weird. Flash has never seen her make that kind of face over homework. He makes that kind of face over homework.
“I mean,” he says, flicking his pen against the table, “he can do do this stuff in his sleep.”
Gwen snorts.
Peter snores. He's slumped against Flash's shoulder and, Flash notices for the first time, starting to drool.
It's adorable.
And Flash needs to get his head checked because, yeah, he just thought that. He clears his throat.
“Figurarly. I meant figuraly.”
“Fig-ur-a-tiv-ly.”
“Yeah, that.”
“He can't stay awake through class. He hands in assignments where he forgot to do about half of the assignment. No teacher is going to forgive that, no matter how brilliant he is. Now. Do your homework.”
Flash tries. For about twenty seconds.
“But,” he says, when the words start to bur and swim all over the page, because that's his mind's self-defense against actually having to read them, “what does he do all night? He never used to be like this.”
Gwen is really frowning now. Flash is distracted from trying to nudge Peter into leaning against the wall, instead of against him. Adorable or not, gross is gross.
(And what grosses him out the most is that a part of him is perfectly ok with letting Parker drool all over his shoulder, if that means keeping him there).
“Um. Gwen? You ok?”
“Fine,” says Gwen, in that tone that says she isn't, and she's pissed off, and it's probably definitely his fault. Again. She slams her book shut, notes sandwiched in as a bookmark, and shoves her chair back. “I'm fine. Just, don't call me to do a study group unless you're actually serious about studying, ok?”
She stalks off.
“Mmfrwha? Mmf. Mf?” Peter asks.
“Uh, yeah,” says Flash, staring after her. “Probably.”
They are so failing chemistry.
- - -
They don't fail Chemistry.
(Thanks to life-shortening energy drinks, and Peter staying awake long enough to study with him).
(And Flash's “accidentally” hitting him on the ear with a pencil when he dozes off during the exam).
Their grades are unbelievable, in a bad way. At least, Parker's are unbelievable. Flash is pretty much at status quo.
(Actually, it took two pencils. And a water bottle. And Flash almost getting kicked out of the exam for “harassment.” Teachers pick the weirdest times to give a damn).
But they pass.
“So,” says Parker, when the finals are over and they're sprawled out in Parker's living room. He's got this little grin that looks like trouble, and Flash is distracted from his t.v. set. “What would you do if Spiderman asked you out?”
“What the--? No.” Flash chucks his pillow at him, then regrets it because he's got nothing to lay on now. He slumps onto the carpet and rests his chin on his folded arms, watching the news recording replay for the fourth time. “That's just stupid. And wrong. He's not gay.”
“What? He could be! Or, I dunno. Bi? I guess?”
Flash shoots him a dirty look. He likes Parker a lot. Hell. He probably lov—eurgh. Yeah. That. But trash-talking his hero? Not ok.
“No way,” he says. The recording ends.
“Woah,” says Parker. His tone makes Flash sit up.
“What?” he asks. Parker's staring at him like he's just drowned a kitten, or something.
“What?” Flash insists, trying to sound irritated instead of scared.
Don't look at me like that.
That's how you used to look at me.
“You got a problem with gay,” says Parker. “You asked me out. And you've got a problem with gay.”
“No,” Flash says. “I don't.”
Parker gives him a Look. Head tipped to the side and eyes slanted, skepticism practically radiating off of his eyebrows.
(Seriously. How does he do this stuff with his face? How?)
“You kind of do.”
“I don't!” Flash lies.
And he thinks about this scrawny kid with messy hair and glasses and, christ, but it doesn't take much, does it? When you're that young. When all this weird chemistry shit is happening, and hormones are doing uncomfortable things to your head.
And, not just your head.
And while that's happening, there's this kid with his stupid, messy hair. And he's got red-rimmed eyes because his parents are gone, and he still cries about that sometimes.
And Flash? Flash wasn't too young to work out that it wasn't ok. Not with his dad, or his dad's friends, or any of the guys he was supposed to be like.
“What about you?” Flash snaps, trying to feel like he's eighteen and graduating, not a fucked-up ten-year-old with the whole of highschool hell ahead of him. He fails. "You've got that 'thing,' you gotta do, right?”
“Yeah,” says Parker. His voice sounds about an inch high.
That unnamed 'thing' Peter has, that he can't talk about. The reason behind ”I can't,” and ”Sorry.”
Flash hates it, whatever it is.
“So now you're, what? Trying to get me stuck on Spiderman so I'll stop-- stop bothering you?” Flash barks out a laugh, and smiles, but barely even tries to make it look like he means it. “Thanks, man, thanks,” he says, sarcastically. Mostly sarcastically.
Sarcasm was what he was going for. He doesn't want to know how pathetically--
(Hurt)
--pathetic he actually sounded. He stands up and pulls the dvd.
“That's not what I meant,” says Peter, and now his voice is down to about a centimeter. If Flash breathed loudly at the wrong time, he'd have missed it.
“Ok,” he says, for something to say. “Hah. Yeah. Uh, I gotta get back.”
He doesn't want to look up and see Parker's expression, or find Parker giving that look again. The one he used to give. Before.
I changed. I'm not like that anymore.
I'm not.
Am I?
- - -
Flash glares at the motivational poster on the back of the principle's door.
He is so sick of that poster.
Footsteps approach from down the hall, but he ignores them until,
“Detention, huh?”
Parker.
The reaction happens deep, at gut level, but Flash is too exhausted to register it outwardly. He stays slumped.
“Yeah,” he says. He takes a breath. Holds it. Lets it out with the confession. “Fighting.”
He waits.
“Skateboarding,” says Parker, mildly.
“What?” It's not the reaction Flash was expecting. He risks a look. Peter makes a wry face, and sits down beside him. “Oh. You were?”
“Yeah,” says Parker. “In the cafeteria. On the tables. You missed it. I was pretty cool.” His shoulders do this twitchy thing, and he lets out an uncomfortable laugh. “What, you thought I was just visiting?”
“No!” Flash says. Too quickly.
And wishes he could literally drown in the ensuing silence, instead of just figuraly drown.
Uh.
Fig-ur-a-ti-vely.
Parker clears his throat. “Yeah,” he says, “except I kind of am. I, uh, got caught, sort of on purpose? So. Hah. Wow. I'm dumb.”
Yeah. Yeah, you are.
Shit. Why do you have to be so completely...
Flash rubs at his face, turning his head away and pretending to be real interested in a blank wall.
“Um.”
Shut up.
“Um, Flash?”
Please, shut up.
“I just, about Spiderman. I can't imagine a guy who voluntarily wears that much spandex is completely straight.”
Flash blinks a couple of times. Then he cracks the fuck up, forgetting his efforts to maintain whatever manly dignity he's got left
“Shit,” he says, “Now who's got a problem with gay?”
“It's not a problem! it's just. Ok. It's stereotyping. A bit.”
He laughs. Flash laughs, slightly less hysterically this time. It's not that funny, but it's like saying,
“It's ok. We're ok. Everything's normal.”
“Besides,” Flash adds, as an afterthought, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, “It's the only kind of full-body athletic-wear that makes sense for a masked vigilante, isn't it? it would be hard to get anything else that would work.”
“...You're probably right.”
They sit in silence for a few seconds, but silence is ok, now. Flash leans back, and closes his eyes.
“I don't got a problem with gay,” he says, and it doesn't feel like a lie this time. “I think I mostly just got a problem with me.”
The light touch at his knee doesn't make him open his eyes. It just makes him stop breathing.
“Flash?” Parker's voice is as uncertain as he's ever heard it. He does open his eyes, then, and Parker looks so nervous that he almost cracks up again.
Start laughing hysterically, or asphyxiate.
Choices, choices.
Parker saves him a question. “Are you ok with maybe?”
“Yeah,” says Flash, with no hesitation. His lungs start exchanging air with the outside world again.
“If I say we have to fake a fight, or, or break it off for a while, and pretend to hate each other, you'll do it? No questions?”
“Yes,” says Flash. Yes to everything. Sign the contract and ignore the small print, because who cares? He'll think about it later.
“Okay,” says Parker, and it's the full two-syllables “okay,” no the ordinary and everyday “ok.”
“Okay. Um.”
He leans forward. Noses get in the way. Flash and Peter both try to compensate for that, at the same time and in the same direction. Parker starts to back off.
Flash panics. There's no reason or rationality, just this intense fear that, if it's him, Euguene Thompson, then he can derail everything with one inconsequential screw-up.
Please. Let me get this right.
Just once.
He follows Parker's retreat, leaning out of balance and out of comfort. Parker's waiting for him. It's an ambush, and totally unfair in every way, but it works.
“No more Spiderman videos,” Peter says, maybe a minute later.
“Mmmm. Wait. What? Why?”
Parker pulls back and gives him a half-assed glare. He waves a hand vaguely. “'Cause. You've got all these ideas about him being perfect and awesome and-- and it's just an idea, and how am I supposed to compete with that? An idea?”
“You don't gotta compete,” says Flash, thickly. Shit. He needs his heart to stop doing that before it explodes, or something, because that'd be spectacularly gory and this is a really bad time to die.
People say things like “I could die happy right now,” but that's just dumb, even by his standards.
He wants to live.
He can't remember the last time he wanted to live this badly. Not just survive, but, live.
“You don't gotta compete with anyone,” he says, “ever.”
He leans back in to Peter.
A while later, voice a little hoarse an a lot breathless, he says, “I'd say no. To Spiderman. I mean, he's-- but he's not you, so. Not that that'd ever happen, but, yeah. No.”
“Oh.” says Parker. He sounds a little weird, but Flash isn't in a position to criticize. “Um. Good?”
“Mm.” Flash decides this should be more with the making out, and less with the talking about Spiderman. Normally he's completely down for talking about Spiderman, but right now he's got Peter, and that's better.
At least, it is until there's a click, and an annoying motivational poster hitting the wall, and the school Principle standing there and clearing his throat very, very loudly.
- - -
“So. We got kicked out of detention? Is that what just happened?”
“Pretty much. Yeah.”
“Huh.”