A Really Good Lawyer [Spider-Man]

Chapter 11: No Good Deed

April is the cruelest month.

Poetry has never been Peter's favourite. His brain is hardwired for chemistry and engineering rather than metre and verse, and he remembers the ingredients and measurements for his web fluid better than Uncle Ben's face. Salicylic acid, toulene, methanol... on and on like lines in the world's worst poem. The most he'd been bothered to care about poetry had been to know if MJ would be sitting in English class beside him last September, pulling faces whenever the teacher spoke. Before Doctor Strange's spell, he'd been a STEM kid, through and through.

But the GED doesn't care about the skills Peter's shaped through the legacies of long-dead parents and aspirations to become a superhero like Iron-Man. It wants to see how Peter reacts to the arts as well. It wants to know if Peter can find meaning in situations with no clear answers-- no right and no wrong. So, after another day at Nelson, Murdock and Page, Peter goes to the library to try. (He'd promised Matt he'd try.)

The Wasteland isn't exactly a beginner-friendly place to start, but he isn't able to refuse the excitement of the librarian when he asks for suggestions. After thanking her, he tucks himself in a quiet corner, curling up in an armchair.

April is the cruelest month.

He runs his fingers along the cream-coloured page, etching his nails into the letters. He reads slowly, his lower lip tucked between his teeth, and tries to remember his English class from a lifetime ago. Hidden among the stacks, someone coughs. Peter's hand drums against his leg.

He thinks he gets it. There's hope in April, in the melting of the snow and the promise of new life. And nothing, the poem insists, is crueler than hope. The choice to live again is a risk. Everything could go wrong-- the cold could settle in again and kill the life that tried to begin anew. Winter had been a time of stasis, but April means you have to get back in action. You have to choose to live.

It probably would have been a good idea to bring his GED textbooks to study alongside this. As it stands, they're at home on his kitchen counter, marked up with ink from a really good pen he'd taken from the office. The date's getting closer-- only two weeks away-- and he's not sure if the bowling ball in his stomach is from anticipation or dread. It's not like he's exactly worried, but the chance of him failing is never zero. It would be an embarrassing way to start a new life.

Peter could still work at the firm while waiting to retake the test. Foggy and Matt wouldn't tell him to get lost. The new income from the law firm (which has gone towards covering rent and some sweet thrift store finds so far) has been a godsend. No more working with techbros on their protein shake startups. No more demands to pay Peter in exposure. So, maybe, Peter's just afraid of losing the promise of sweet, sweet income. He doesn't want to do anything to fuck up.

***

He fucks up.

About halfway into his third week at Nelson, Murdock and Page, Peter's tasks have upgraded from menial office work to joining in on legal research and managing the private information of the firm's clients. It's simultaneously more and less trust than Peter ever had at the Stark internship. Sure, he'd had free-range access to all sorts of insane technology, but it's different somehow to hold sensitive information in his hands.

(He keeps memories of working alongside Mr. Stark buried beneath his chest, his heart trembling at the memory of throwaway praise Tony had let slip when they'd worked on projects that would never made it past the workbench. Once, Mr. Stark had thumped him on the back, grinning as he'd admired Peter's modifications to his nanosuit. "Nice job, kid. Keep it up and you'll be better than me someday.")