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Flash pokes at the meatloaf in his microwave dinner, watching the 6’o’clock news fade in and out on his small shitty TV.
“Repair work began on the Williamsburg Bridge this morning after last month’s disastrous-”
The newscaster’s voice buzzes. Flash tosses a shoe at the dresser. The static fizzes, then clears.
The apartment is empty and his homework is mostly done, his notebooks scattered in a pile next to his bed. He’s tired. He could go for a joint, but he already smoked his last dimebag and it’s not like Vic would let him have any of his stuff.
His phone dings with a new text. He gropes for it on his bedside table.
You want to go over Chapter 12?
yea
Flash lights a cigarette, waiting for Gwen to reply. On the TV, they’re showing old grainy footage of Spider-man rappelling down a building, carrying a woman away from a burning window.
Okay. Tomorrow at 4, my place?
Gwen lives in a nice part of town and an even nicer condo. Her mom makes them snacks and her brothers are named after presidents. Flash always feels out of place in her family’s living room.
diner, emmons and 14th?
He clicks through the contacts after he hits send, glancing outside to see if it’s still sleeting too hard to walk to the corner. He drops his fork in his macaroni.
Spider-man is folded up on the fire escape outside his room, tucked under the awning near his neighbor’s dead potted plants. His head is resting on Flash’s windowsill.
Flash almost falls off the bed. He stubs out his cigarette and looks around his room—the walls are bare as always, the carpet's dirty. His closet is open, full of shit of his dad's that his mom still won't get rid of. He shuts it and kicks some shoes and a dirty pair of jeans under the bed, then taps on the window.
"You could have called, Parker," he says, grinning.
Peter doesn't respond. After a long pause, he still doesn't respond. He doesn't even move.
Flash's face falls. He pushes his sleeves up, jerking at the lock on his window. Even with all the rattling, Peter is completely still. Flash realizes, with a sick twist in his stomach, that he doesn’t even know how long he’s been out there. He finally gets the lock to flip, and the icy window sticks and shudders as he shoves up the sliding pane.
The sounds and smells of the city hit him—tires splashing in puddles, people yelling on the corner, the urine stink of the alley a few stories down. It’s damp outside, a harsh bitter cold. Peter’s breath rises, foggy, in front of his mask.
“Peter,” Flash says.
Peter doesn’t respond.
Flash braces the window up and reaches out, taking him under the arms. The sharp edge of the frame digs into his shoulder—he doesn’t let it budge until he’s lifted Peter up off the catwalk, pulling him forward into his room.
Peter’s shoes drag across the sill. When Flash gets him inside, he lets the window slide-stutter closed. The sounds of the city are muted. He carefully sets Peter on his feet.
Peter slumps. He won’t rest weight on one ankle. He smells like asphalt and slushy gutter snow and one side of the suit is scuffed up and black, like something dragged him down the street. The mask is looking somewhere on Flash’s chest, expressionless, weirdly blank.
“Hey,” Flash says, quiet.
He carefully rests his hand on the small of his back. When Peter doesn’t move, he slides it up to cup the back of his neck. Peter leans forward slightly.
Flash’s heart is racing. He just saw Peter a couple hours ago after school. He was fine, laughing, layered in three different coats. He'd managed to ping Flash with a paper ball when he skated by.
“You okay?
Peter is completely still. His shoulders are hunched. Normally he’s hidden under a backpack, board, jackets, and he’s always in motion, it makes him seem bigger than he is. He’s still tall, but he’s thin in the suit. Flash can hardly feel him breathing.
When Peter still doesn’t respond, Flash pulls back a little, just enough to search with the tips of his fingers, feeling out the seam of the mask. It’s lower than he expected, flush against the space above Peter’s shoulderblades. He follows it around to the front and slowly works at rolling it up. When he sees a line of black blood, pooled and dried on Peter’s upper lip, he’s especially careful lifting it over his nose.
Peter doesn’t fight it at all. When Flash pulls it off, he sways slightly, his hair sweaty and sticking up.
It’s overcast, twilight, but there’s enough light left for Flash to make out Peter’s face, white and younger-looking than usual. A purplish bruise rings the bone outside his brow. His bottom lip is busted. His eyes are out of focus.
“Hey,” Flash says.
Peter blinks, slow and vacant. “Cold,” he mumbles, barely there. His voice is slurred.
“Okay,” Flash says. When Peter doesn’t say anything else, just keeps staring off somewhere off past his shoulder, Flash awkwardly rubs his biceps. He rubs his forearms. When he reaches his ribs, cupping his sides in his hands and rubbing up and down, Peter’s eyes slide shut. His head slowly dips forward and rests against Flash’s shoulder.
Flash’s eyes widen. His arms slide around him on instinct.
“Hey,” he says, a weird feeling clenching in his chest. The suit is damp, wet with snow. Underneath, Peter feels cold as stone.
Flash cups the back of his head, then smooths his palm up his back. He finds a hidden zipper in the center, well-camouflaged except for the slight ridge of it on the underside of the suit. The tongue is tucked under the seam. It sticks for a second, then unzips with a smooth buzzing sound, all the way to the small of Peter’s back. Flash peels the suit down.
Peter’s naked underneath.
It’s not like it’s the first time or something. Flash has seen him before: for years after gym at school, where all he remembers is how skinny Peter was, how weirdly long his limbs were and how fast he tried to finish his showers, then one time, not long ago, when he was waiting to give Peter a ride somewhere in the summer.
(It was bright in Peter’s room. It smelled like the lemon meringue his aunt was making. His uncle was working on something in the front yard—the hollow hammering sounds echoed in the house. Flash remembers leaning on Peter’s desk, looking up at the posters on his wall, at clothespinned photos of trees blooming in Central Park. The negatives fluttered in the breeze from the window.
Peter left the bathroom door open as he changed. Flash saw glimpses of him then: his side, his bare shoulder, his ass. Peter caught his eye through the crack in the door as he hopped, pulling on his pants. He smiled, his toothbrush hanging from his mouth.)
Flash has never seen him close up though, really. Not this close. He expected him to be buffer, tighter biceps, a sixpack. He’s just Peter. Lean, a little more defined, maybe, but he mostly looks the same as he always has. His skin is white, though. His nipples are hard with cold. Dark splotches of bruises run up the whole side of his torso, layered under a scabbed-up scrape on his ribs. Flash looks away.
His drawers clunk as he drags them open, digging around for clothes. Before he shuts them, he grabs his lighter and cigarettes, stuffs them in the back of the top one.
He pulls a shirt on Peter first, a track meet tee from middle school, soft and thin with age. Peter sways and Flash braces him, steps him into plaid sleep pants, ties the drawstring. He pulls a grey Knicks sweatshirt over his head.
Peter swims in it. The cuffs run down past his knuckles. Police sirens wail outside, then slowly fade away.
“Stay here, okay,” Flash says.
He sets Peter down on the edge of his bed and pulls the quilt up around his shoulders. Peter doesn’t move. He just sits there. Flash switches his bedside lamp on for him. It flickers for a few seconds like it always does—Peter hardly blinks.
“I’ll be back.”
Peter slowly folds his arms across his stomach.
Flash swallows, standing in front of his door. His palm curves around the cold metal of the handle. He presses his ear to the wood and listens. When there isn’t any sound, only the creaks of the apartment, he quickly flicks the latches and slips out into the hallway. He pulls the door shut behind him.
It’s dark outside his room. He moves quickly, opening the closet and grabbing a washcloth and all the blankets he can hold, then heading into the kitchen.
The sink is dripping. His mom pinned a note on the cabinet saying she’d be home by five.
Flash drops the blankets on the table and pulls open the fridge. Empty condiment bottles rattle on the door. He digs through a six-pack and cartons of two-week old Chinese food to find the milk—shakes it, pops it open to smell-check it. He searches through the cabinets for the biggest cup they have, a round blue mug with Goofy on it. He fills it with milk, then sticks it in the microwave.
As it heats up, he wets the washcloth the warm water, wringing it out. The faucet sputters.
The wait is the hardest part. The seconds beep down and he watches the front door, fingers tapping on the counter.
He ends up stopping it ten seconds before it’s done, spooning in some Nestle mix he found in the cupboard on top of the stove. He mixes it and tosses the spoon in the sink, then carries everything back to his room. Halfway through the hallway, he pauses, balancing everything precariously in one hand. He cranks the heat up ten degrees.
Peter is still sitting there when he gets back, tilting slightly to the side. His eyes have drifted shut. The shirt and sweatshirt have slipped down on one side, baring the round curve of his shoulder—there’s a livid red-purple bruise on his collarbone. His face is bloody.
Flash sits down next to him and slowly, Peter opens his eyes. Flash touches his jaw with a few of his fingers, turns his face towards him. He starts carefully wiping at the blood.
Peter looks tired. He’s pliant, listless. Flash cards his sweaty hair back to clean his forehead. He passes his thumb over his cheek as he works at the painful swollen spot under his eye. Peter blinks placidly. His eyes drift down, lingering on Flash’s mouth.
Peter usually goes to Gwen when he’s hurt. Flash knows this. He isn’t jealous, exactly. Gwen has a full first aid kit and air conditioning and a shower in the bathroom attached to her room, and she’s good at making even stitches. The jealousy thing—it’s not like that with them, really. He knows about Peter and Gwen, and he knows Gwen knows about him too, about him and Peter.
(Once behind the gym he could smell her perfume, a bright peachy musk, in the space behind Peter’s ear, in his hair—it was all he could smell and he pinned Peter on the wall and got his hand in his pants, felt out his dick in his boxers and jerked him off in plain view of the back parking lot.
It was a hot buzzing afternoon and Peter’s skateboard clattered to the concrete. Peter had hung off of him, mouth open against his temple. It went fast—Flash edged his teeth in the sweaty nape of his neck, Peter awkwardly humped his hand, and Flash remembers the sound Peter made, a barely there grunt, the way he clutched Flash’s jersey, the feeling of Peter’s come dripping in his palm.
When Flash went to move away Peter pulled him back for a second, grinning and dazed, because his knees were weak.)
Flash cleans the caked blood off of his lip. He fixes the sweatshirt and quilt. When he offers Peter the steaming mug, Peter accepts it. For a moment he just sits there, bare hands clamped around it, then he lifts it to his mouth. He drinks.
Halfway through he starts shivering violently, like somehow his muscles have just warmed up to move again. His teeth chatter, his hands start shaking too bad to even hold the cup anymore. He has this pained shuttered look on his face, trying to keep his teeth together, and Flash takes it the mug from him and sets it on the nightstand.
"Hey," he says. He pulls him forward by the wrist. Peter follows.
Flash lies them down. He guides Peter’s face into his neck—his nose and cheeks are icy cold. Flash covers him with the comforter first, then the fleece quilt he uses for winter, then the threadbare blankets from the closet. He pulls them up past his neck until all that’s visible is the top of Peter’s hair, then leans over his body to tuck in the edges. He smooths them down over the curve of his back and rubs over the top layer, warming him up.
After a long pause, Peter lets out a shaky breath against his collarbone. His fingers slowly curl in Flash’s shirt. He pulls himself up everywhere against Flash’s body, close enough to work his cold hands under Flash’s arms, to let Flash’s thigh slide between his legs. He settles in, teeth clicking. Flash swallows.
“It’s okay,” he says.
Peter breathes out. Flash can feels his nose nudge against his skin. He keeps rubbing, slower now, and leans over to switch off the bedside lamp.
Flash doesn’t really mean to fall asleep, but he does. He has a dream that he’s watching Peter skateboarding behind the grocery store he used to work stock at. It doesn’t make sense, really, Flash worked there way before he even met him, but that’s the dream: Flash sitting against the wall, smoking on his break, Peter shredding on the ramp where they used to hose down the flowers.
The board rolls and scrapes on the pavement. Flash can smell the hose water wetting the sidewalk. Peter balances perfectly, sticks all his landings. There are no cuts or bruises on his chin. He’s grinning.
Flash rubs his eyes. He doesn’t know how late it is, but it’s raining. Thunder booms far away. Drops are pittering quietly on the fire escape. He has a crick in his neck.
Peter crawled up at some point to poke his head above the covers, his arms slung loose around Flash’s torso. He feels warm now, almost hot to the touch. Flash rolls over to face him, careful not to shift the bed too much. The mattress creaks.
Peter’s breathing is slow and deep. His fingers are limp, curled on Flash’s side. The crease in his forehead is smoothed out. His cheek is a little swollen, the cut there is red and angry, but Flash doesn't have anything he can put over it.
Flash looks at him for a while. He rubs some of the leftover blood off under his nose. He passes his knuckles over the bruise on his chin. When Peter breathes out, his lips parting, Flash slowly runs his hand down his chest before he can think about it—feels the warm cotton of the sweatshirt, smooth acrylic letters, then cotton again. He finds the bottom, then edges his fingers up underneath.
When he first touches skin, Peter inhales deeply. He licks his lips. Flash feels out his ribs first, hot under his palm, then his nipple. When Peter doesn’t pull away, he rubs it until it hardens, tweaks it until Peter lets out a shaky breath, pushes forward against him under the weight of the blankets. His knee pulls up to bend over his hip. His dick presses in Flash’s stomach.
Peter is all tight muscle and hot skin under his clothes. The smell of him is stronger when Flash lifts the covers—warm, half like the cologne he wears sometimes, but half something that’s just Peter.
Flash presses his forehead against him, pulling him close, then scoots down. He works the shirt and sweatshirt up to his ribs and opens his mouth against the bare skin underneath and it’s ridiculous, how hard he already is. He hooks his fingers in the worn elastic of Peter’s pants, inching them down past his hips.
He kisses the space between Peter's hips, his palm flat on Peter's abdomen, rubbing slow and warm. He can feel Peter's dick getting hard, full under his sleep pants. When he glances up, Peter’s eyes are open. He’s blinking rapidly, his mouth slack. After a moment, his brows pull together and he awkwardly kicks out of his pants, too eager and kind of clumsy.
Flash shifts to accommodate him, helps get his pants down to his ankles. He runs a slow hand up the back of one of his thighs and Peter grins, sleepy and disbelieving, pulling up to his elbows to watch.
Flash finds the soft crook of his knee, presses his thumb there. Peter's skin goes goosebumpy. Flash pushes his leg up to his chest and it takes Peter a second to take the hint, to hold it there himself. When he does, Flash shifts his other leg open too and spreads him with his thumbs. He’s done this before, but only to girls. He leans down and licks him.
Peter’s hips jolt. His heel shoves down in the bed. He takes in a shuddering gasp and clenches everywhere and Flash has to nuzzle him, mumble things, rub over him in tight warm circles just to get him to relax again.
Thunder cracks, close, then the rain gets louder, hammering on the street, the roof, the window pane.
Peter twists in the sheets, and Flash eats him out for a while. He sucks off once and it makes this loud smacking sound and Peter groans, high and broken in the back of his throat. Flash looks up in time to see his head fall back, his throat bob, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. His hand reaches down to wrap around his own dick.
Flash watches him jerk off. It’s different, not having a cunt to slide his finger into. He spits and works one up into Peter’s ass instead and Peter squeezes on him. When Flash curls his finger towards him, only a little bit, his whole body shudders. His hips move like he’s coming. He smacks Flash’s shoulder, blindly grapples down for hair, and when he doesn’t find anything to hold on to, he pulls on Flash’s ear instead.
Flash doesn’t know what’s different, really, so he breathes on the skin inside his thighs until Peter trembles, rocks his hand like he would on a girl, licks around his finger. Once he slowly draws it out and when Peter’s body goes to close, Flash crushes his face against him, presses his tongue in instead. He doesn’t get very far but Peter moans, actually moans, this loud shaky sound where his voice breaks. He fists the sheets, his knees vicing closed on Flash’s shoulders. He laughs, breathless. Flash has to force his thighs apart again, hold him down.
They find a rhythm. By the end of it Peter is rocking down against his face, shoulders hunched, toes curled, eyes squeezed shut tight. His heel of his good foot digs into Flash’s back.
The mattress creaks, the jerking off starts to sound wet. Flash can smell it. He’s groping himself over his pants, nudging his nose in the crook of Peter’s thigh, and Peter’s fist starts moving faster. He bites his lip. Out of nowhere, he looks down and gropes at Flash’s head, pulls him back by the ear to what he was doing before.
Flash opens his mouth over him again, kisses him, and Peter has this look like he still can’t comprehend it, like he can’t even believe what he’s seeing. Suddenly, his face scrunches up. His brows draw together, concentrating. He makes a small needy sound and pants hard once, then twice, and Flash watches him come. It spurts first, then dribbles down Peter’s knuckles.
Peter sucks in air. He squeezes himself just under the head, milking it, then he falls back flat on the bed. His foot trails down to the small of Flash’s back.
Everything about him is hot. His spread legs, the few drops of come on his belly, his heaving chest, the hollow dips above his collarbone. Flash crawls up on his knees and gets his dick out. He’s shaking.
Peter’s still out of it. When Flash touches his side, his belly trembles under his palm. Flash feels heat rising in his cheeks, seeing how turned on he is, how much he’s into it—he knows he’s going to come, then he sees the bruises, Peter’s swollen bottom lip, the slightly pained post-orgasm look on his face.
For a second, he feels the same kick he used to feel. The weird hot twist in his gut when he’d knee him in the stomach and Peter would crumple—when he’d pull his fist back, knuckles wet, and see Peter’s nose was bloody and Peter would look up at him, dazed, gaping, red dripping in his mouth. It’s short but it’s there, strong, and it almost makes him come.
Instantly, he feels sick. He stops and looks away.
Out of the corner of his eye, Peter opens his eyes. He turns his head, tucked in the pillow, looking at him. After a moment, he reaches out and pulls on his shirt. Reluctantly, Flash looks at him.
Peter searches his face, his brows drawn together. Then something seems to click.
He pulls his shirt down to cover himself, then the sweatshirt over it. He reaches forward and takes Flash’s hips in his hands, pulls him into kneeling over his hips. As Flash watches, he leans up off the bed, resting back on his elbows. He gently presses his face next to Flash’s dick.
Flash can feel his breath on him, his nose, the delicate bones in his face nudging against his abdomen. Peter cups the back of his thighs and pulls him closer. He nuzzles in his shirt with his forehead, then turns his face, opens his mouth over him.
When Flash starts jerking off again, Peter keeps his mouth there, open, barely touching, wet and hot.
It doesn’t take long. Peter just waits, patient, and when Flash’s breath hitches he looks up at him, eyes big.
When Flash comes, everything whites out for a second. He pants, harsh, has to brace himself on an arm. Come hits Peter’s chin, his mouth, and he only grimaces a little. He sucks on his lip. He squints open his eyes, then, and there’s a grin on the end of it.
When Flash sinks to an elbow, Peter moves to meet him, his hair mussy. They don’t kiss, but their mouths brush. Their noses nudge against each other. Peters runs the tips of his fingers up his spine and Flash grunts, collapses on him. Peter laughs and squirms, then goes limp.
They lie there, breathing hard. Everything smells like Peter. His chest rises and falls under Flash's. He wipes the come off his chin, panting up at the ceiling, grinning. After a while, he looks down at himself.
“...You put me in Knicks swag,” he says, incredulous. “I can’t believe you put me in Knicks swag.”
Flash laughs into the pillow. Peter smiles, the tips of his fingers poking experimentally between his shoulderblades. After a pause, he presses his face in the spot behind Flash’s shoulder.
Flash finds his hand. A few of their fingers interlace.
They doze. Flash is pretty sure Peter’s sleeping again. A car alarm goes off once down the street and he doesn’t even budge, tucked against Flash’s side. The rain quiets down, plinking the window pane. The room is dark and humid and cool. It smells like old macaroni and sex.
The TV is still on, more staticy than before. Flash watches Wheel of Fortune for a while, half asleep, his fingers moving absently on Peter’s hip. He gets the first puzzle easy enough, but he’s stuck on the Before & After.
“I’d like to solve,” the woman says.
“Rocky Mountain Dew,“ Peter croaks from his chest.
The letters all light up and the woman jumps up and down, hearing about her trip to Tahiti.
Flash breathes in deeply and stretches. Peter does too. He shifts up from where he was lying in Flash’s shoulder and Flash’s arm hurts at first, blood rushing back in, then pins and needles. He opens his hand and makes a fist.
Peter yawns, rolling on his back and scrolling through his phone. He’s just opened up Words With Friends when suddenly it lights up, ringing.
“Hey,” he says, answering it. He clears his throat, fumbling into sitting up. “Hey.”
Flash can make out Gwen’s voice from the receiver.
Peter listens for a while, cross-legged, hunched in a way that shouldn’t be comfortable. He chews on his thumb. When Gwen laughs at something, his eyes slit, content. He smiles first, then grins.
“No.” He laughs, sweeping his hand through his hair. “No!” he crows. “I’m with Flash.”
He glances at Flash then, mouth fighting against a smile, and it hits Flash right in the gut. No-one’s ever looked at him like that before.
Flash can hear the ohhh on the other end of the line. Gwen talks more. It’s lower now. As Flash watches, Peter’s eyes go half-lidded. He fiddles with a stray string from the quilt.
“Yeah,” he says. His cheeks turn red. “Yeah,” he says, quieter.
Gwen keeps talking and there’s a pause, obvious, where she’s waiting for something. Peter looks up at Flash.
“Gwen says hi. And she can meet you at the diner.”
Flash doesn’t know when things shifted, but they did. “Okay. Hi.”
“He says hi back.”
Flash reaches over the side of the bed, picks up the suit off the floor. He rubs the material between his fingers.
“Yeah. Well no, I mean.” Peter flops on his back. The mattress shakes. “How long do you think it will take you guys, I don’t want to- okay.”
Peter reaches out, tugs down on Flash’s sleeve. The phone is wedged in his shoulder. He looks nervous.
“Gwen wants to know if we can all hang out. After the school stuff. Like, we could, I dunno, we could-”
Gwen talks.
“Movie,” Peter repeats. “Food.” His face screws up, pained and awkward. He quirks his brow. “Food?”
“Yeah, sure,” Flash says.
Relief breaks out over Peter’s face.
“Yeah.” He presses his chin to his chest, hunching his shoulders. His voice is a stage whisper. “Yeah, he said yeah. Okay.” He groans, rolling his head. “Okay!” He’s still grinning. “Bye.”
Flash smiles a little, seeing him. He looks down, tries the stretch of suit. It feels cool and slick.
“I know,” Peter says, this time to him. His face glows an eerie blue in from the screen. He’s texting someone, probably his aunt. “I need something warmer, right? The cold zombie coma is like a spider. Thing.”
“Is it a swimsuit?” Flash asks.
Peter sets the phone on the window ledge and pulls up to rest on an elbow. His hair is all flat on one side.
“Yeah,” he says. His shoulders are mostly bare. He looks good. “Like. Well... no,” he admits.
He laughs his creaky laugh and Flash feels himself grin. Peter takes the leg of the suit in his hand and idly messes around with it too. He glances at Flash before looking down at it, and Flash realizes Peter was checking him out.
“I looked online for something that would work.” Peter runs his hand through his hair—somehow that makes it messier than before. “But everything was really... shiny, you know. Really bright and, like, Kerri Shrug. So I made something myself.”
When Flash doesn’t respond, Peter looks up from the fabric, smiling, biting his lower lip. Flash’s face feels warm.
“Kerri Strug,” he corrects.
“Yeah,” Peter says, scrunching his nose up in defeat and dropping his head to his own shoulder. He smiles up at Flash through his wince. “Her too.”
Flash reaches forward, lets his fingers play at the skin just under the hem of his shirt. Peter’s grin falls. He scoots closer, chews his lip, his eyes fixed on Flash’s mouth. He looks unnaturally serious and Flash is about to joke about it except then Peter’s lips part. He leans in.
“Who turned the fucking heat up?” a voice booms from the hallway.
Flash goes rigid.
He glances back at his door, at the two locks he slid shut. There’s a pause. He tries to swallow. As he watches, the handle turns. When it won’t open, it jiggles hard, rattling. Absently, he feels Peter’s hand on his side.
There’s silence for a minute, and suddenly, a hard slam on the wood. Flash starts, reflex, but Peter is completely still. Flash glances back at him and Peter has this face Flash has never seen before, hard and alert, his jaw tight, eyes fixed on the door. He feels Peter’s hand slowly curl into a fist over his shirt.
Flash doesn’t even realize how hard his heart is pounding until the footsteps retreat down the hallway.
“‘S just my brother,” he says. His stomach sinks. There’s a tightness in his throat. “He-”
He turns back around and Peter cups his face, covering where his cheeks are hot, and kisses him.
It’s fierce, biting. He hauls Flash closer, hands fisted in his shirt, and for a second, Flash feels how strong Peter really is—the iron grip of his hand on his side, then on his jaw. Peter tilts his head and kisses him hard enough to crush Flash’s nose in his cheek, and Flash lets him. He lifts his hand. It hovers, but he doesn’t touch him back.
It’s only when he rests a hand on his thigh, just to ground himself, that it’s like Peter remembers.
He pulls back, breathing hard. He won’t look up. He swallows and his panting cuts off and it’s this weird moment of silence.
Flash follows him forward. He kisses him again. When Peter doesn’t respond, he lightly bites his bottom lip. Peter smiles then. He bumps their faces together.
“You should let me mess with your TV,” he says, pushing his forehead off of Flash’s. He peers at it over his shoulder. The channel is buzzing now, the picture flickering in and out.
“Okay,” Flash says. His chest feels tight and open at the same time.
“Seriously, analog should have been left in like, ‘95, but I can work with what I’ve got.”
He hooks his chin over Flash’s shoulder and winds around him. When Flash holds him, arms loose, Peter goes limp. His fingers play on the back of Flash's neck.
"Thanks," Peter mumbles.
Slowly, Flash breathes out. When Peter doesn't pull away, he spreads his hand on his back. He nods.
The first time Flash saw Peter as Spider-man, it was a Thursday night. There was a test the next morning and him and Gwen were sitting on her bedroom floor, books cracked open.
“Describe a chemical bond,” Gwen said, knees tucked underneath her. She always looks calm, pretty, put together. Flash remembers the purple cardigan she was wearing, the small black bow tying back her ponytail.
He stopped chewing his pencil and took it out of his mouth. He needed a cigarette. He went to shift his knee and bumped half a plate of celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins.
“A bond between. Atoms,” he started. “That allows the formation of chemicals. It’s caused by electrostatis-”
“Electrostatic,” Gwen corrected, encouraging.
“Electrostatic force of attraction between opposite charges.”
Gwen smiled, genuine and happy. Flash ran his hand up over the back of his hair.
“Can you say anything about the types?” she asked.
Flash swallowed, scanned his notes, already knowing it wouldn’t be there. He shook his head and glanced up, and Gwen was staring at him. Flash stared back. Gwen blinked.
“Well, the strongest is the covalent bond,” she said, paging through the book to find a diagram. She looked kind of pink. “Where there’s a stable balance of attractive and repulsive forces between the atoms.”
That kick-started Flash’s brain. “And they don’t have to be, like. The same-” He waved his hand, searching.
“Right, they don’t necessarily have to be composed of the same elements, as long as they are of comparable electro-“
There was a loud clatter, and Flash looked up just in time to see Spider-man careening onto the fire escape. He tried to slow down, feet kicking, but he hit the wall anyways with a dull thud. A petunia pot, precariously balanced in Gwen’s window, slipped off and broke on the ground.
After a moment, Peter dragged himself up over the sill.
“That’s not what I meant to do,” he said. He scooped up the plant in its clump of soil. The roots hung sadly from his fingers. “Breaking your flower was like the last-”
He tried to help the stalk stand up with one of his fingers. It drooped. When he lifted it up to his face to look at it, Flash could see one of his eye plates was cracked.
“Actually the last thing I meant to do. My depth perception is all-” He made a looping crazy motion with his finger, then noticed Flash. He straightened up.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” Flash replied.
Flash knew Peter was Spider-man. He knew for a long time, because him and Peter hung out now, rode the subway home together, and Peter would tell him things. He’d just never seen him in the suit before.
Gwen was already up, pushing the window frame up further and helping Peter into the room. She accepted the flower from him and set it in the corner of the sill, and once Peter got inside, she knelt in front of her bed, groping around underneath. She dragged out a small first aid kit and popped it open with a clean click.
Peter stretched a long theatrical step over their studying stuff, making a beeline straight for her bed—instantly Gwen pointed at him, warning. Peter froze. He raised his hands in the air.
“You’re not bleeding,” Gwen said, more command than question.
“Nope. No. Just.” Peter made a clicking sound and tilted his head, pointed to his eye.
“Okay.”
Peter immediately flopped down, spreadeagle. He groaned dramatically. After a second, he rolled over, sat up, pulled his mask off the top of his head.
There was a cut over his brow, bleeding a little, but it didn’t look that bad. The eye underneath was bruised though, swollen shut. That looked pretty bad.
“What happened?” Gwen asked, her face somewhere between concerned and grossed out. Peter imitates the curl in her lip, then wrinkles up his nose.
“I was helping this kid and it was dark and he thought I was a bad guy and whacked me in the face.”
“Well couldn’t you-?”
“I mean I was in midair. It’s not like I could-” He flicks his fingers out. “Drop him.”
“He really needs to change his outfit,” Gwen said, busying herself with digging through bandages.
“The car thief?” Flash saw it on the news. He’s wearing a red sweatshirt and red sweats and sometimes even a red ski mask.
“I don’t know what that guy’s problem is,” Peter told him. “It’s very confusing.”
Gwen found the right bandages and leaned up on her knees and when Peter saw, he bent down a little closer for her. When Gwen glanced up, he smiled, huge and dopey. She smiled back and looked down and shook her head, turning a bottle of rubbing alcohol over on a swab of cotton.
“Flash, will you hold this?” she asked, businesslike, handing the bottle to him.
Flash took it. He carefully sat on the very edge of her bed.
Gwen seemed unconcerned. She brushed Peter’s hair back in her fingers, started dabbing at his eyebrow with antiseptic. Peter was eying Flash, trying to fight down a smile.
“You’re helping,” he said after a pause.
Gwen smacked his arm. Flash laughed, shaking his head.
“You’re being very helpful,” Peter added. He grinned, looking at Flash for a second too long.
Gwen worked quickly, efficiently. Once the bleeding stopped and the cut was clean, she covered it with a clear piece of medical tape. The butterfly stitches were small and even.
“Okay,” she said, smoothing Peter’s hair down and standing up. She closed up the box and went into her bathroom.
“Have you eaten?” she called out, the water running.
“You mean like dinner?” Peter asked.
Gwen came back in with a cold rag. She was gentle when she laid it on his eye. Peter smiled up at her, small and happy.
“I mean like, anything after 3,” Gwen clarified.
Peter reached up, held the cloth there. He acted like he was thinking. Flash knew he wasn’t. After a second he shook his head, made an mm sound. “No.”
“We have tagine. Do you like tagine?” Gwen asked Flash.
“Uh. Sure,” Flash said.
“Okay. Give me ten to heat some up. You want a power bar too, Peter?”
“Um, yeah. Chocolate. The chocolate kind.”
“Okay.”
The door clicked shut behind her and then it was just Flash and Peter. There was a careful distance between them on Gwen’s powder blue bedsheets, Flash in his black jeans and a hoodie, Peter in his busted up suit.
Peter hit his heel on the floor, marring the neat vacuum lines in the carpet.
“Yours next time,” he said. He glanced over, let his hand drop. His eye was swollen shut, but he’s still smiling.
Flash laughed quietly and breathed out his nose, rubbed the back of his neck.
“Better stock up on Gatorade,” Peter said.
“I live in Brooklyn,” Flash told him, hunched over, elbows resting on his knees.
“Yeah?” Peter asked.
“I live in East New York,” Flash emphasized.
Peter’s face was hard to read. He was just looking at Flash, assessing him. “Next time,” he pressed.
Flash shook his head, but he couldn’t help smiling. He didn’t really look over, but he lifted Peter’s hand, pressed the washcloth back to his eye.
Peter hunched his shoulders and grinned at him for a long time, his jaw pushed out. He looked out the window.