swing the conscience, pull the lever
maybe talking's not the feature.
"PATRICK?"
It was the most painful, pregnant pause Levina had ever heard. She stared at him, skin ablaze, and he stared at her, suit in a puddle at his feet. She really did not know what to do. What should she do? It was impossible to tear her eyes away from him. And from the way his eyes took up half the size of his face, it was clear he wasn't doing any better.
It felt like thirty years. They kept staring at each other in what had to be the worst stalemate of all time.
"It's, uh, it's Peter Parker, actually," Patrick said with a slack jaw. When she finally caught up to herself and the gravity of the world—the cars and the buildings coming back to her—he snapped out of the staring contest too and went, "I mean—I mean yeah no, it's, it is, um . . . shit."
He scrambled to pick up the suit, slipping around since his feet were still in it, desperately trying to bunch it to his chest. She realized he was practically naked and jerked away. The wall. The wall with the penis on it. Her cheeks were as hot as the veins in her arms.
"It's a, it's a costume, I swear! For a, uh, costume party! Very, um, very well-made."
"It's the middle of the afternoon," she blurted, and if it wasn't for the tension heightening their senses he wouldn't have heard it. Or wait, were his senses already heightened? Was that one of his perks? Why was she thinking about this? This was a stalemate!
She felt him stiffen. "Well, costume parties can be early!"
"On a Tuesday?"
He mumbled to himself so quietly she could barely hear it, "Damnit. Uh . . . this isn't what it looks like! I swear!"
She looked back at him. It was obvious he was fucked. She was fucked. They were both fucked.
"You're Spider-Man," she breathed, looking over him. "Oh my God."
He furrowed his brows—a telltale sign that he was having trouble hearing her. His face was embarrassed to the point of no return and his eyes shifted from hers. "This is, um, this is . . . this sucks," he groaned.
Levina was frozen again because yes, it very much did. Patrick-Peter-Parker looked at her and this time, he was horrified. His jaw popped open and his eyes took up even more of his face if that was possible. (Do spider powers make your eyes bigger?)
"Uh, what's going on with your arms?" He gulped.
Her heart fell out of her ass. She peered down and oh God no, she was glowing from the inside out. Her veins were even more brilliant than before, so bright and so intense that a rush hit her all at once. Memory, and now shock, had consumed her.
She just walked in on Spider-Man.
Levina knew there were two main forms of response when reacting to spur-of-the-moment horrors. One was to face it head-on however rashly that may be, and the other was to head for the hills before reality could even set in. This phenomenon was aptly named fight or flight.
Levina did neither. She was not a fight nor a flight person. Considering her circumstances, she found that she was the third, arguably worse type: freeze.
She wanted desperately to go away again. It was unhealthy but she wanted to vanish into herself and never see Peter again. Her throat dried up. She was trapped. Stuck. The walls of the alley bound her in place, had her writhing inside herself as her veins burned so vividly she was sure they would rip out of her and wrap around her neck.
". . . Are you okay?"
She still could not move. She barely registered what he was saying. Can you DO something? Punch him! Run away! Pray! The familiar twinge of sparks netting her throat returned, and anything she wanted to say was caught in the crossfire. She was thinking about too many things but also nothing. What happens now oh my God what happens now where do I go from here?
"I need to go home," she croaked, tears stinging her eyes. It was the only thing she could think of. Maybe if she stared at the wall-penis long enough she wouldn't feel like crying.
"Okay," Patrick-Peter said tentatively. "Let me just—um—"
The sound of rustling made her look back. He was wrestling into his suit again, yanking it up and pressing the spider emblem on his chest, basically vacuum-sealing to fit him. If she wasn't clouded with static right now she would've been impressed.
Peter-Patrick webbed his backpack to the wall between some garbage cans. She was still paralyzed. Her eyes were blown wide and she could feel them glossing over. This was such a horrible situation for her. Because now that the shock of Spider-Man (SPIDER-MAN) had cooled, there was the realization that she had been exposed. She was lit like a fucking Christmas tree, and he was right there. Now he knew irreversibly that she was a freak of nature, a complete other, a ghost of something the people he looked up to had sought to destroy. She felt so horribly disfigured in her own skin, like she was burning off right in front of him, leaving only the viridian of her veins left to rot.
"Hold on, hold on." Peter was in front of her. His hands were up. Every part of him was covered red and blue except for his face. He looked cautious, timid, as his oakwood eyes drew from her face to her arms, to the outlines of green coming through her clothes, and back up to her again. The fear in her, the vulnerability, was mirrored through his face. And then he moved a little closer, asking in a gentle voice, "Let me take you home."
Wait, what?
She blinked. It was hard to know why he was offering, but the fact that he was even considering it meant she looked about three seconds away from death. The energy in her was unravelling and if she didn't get somewhere private soon she'd expose herself to everybody nearby. Then she noticed that he probably understood that. And it was strange to think that with what she knew now, he was maybe the only person that could.
She nodded hard. Her throat was sparking again. She felt just like she used to when those H.Y.D.R.A scientists put a shackle around her neck to hold her down.
"You sure?" When Levina nodded again, even though her gut was twisting, Peter wound his arm around her waist (eyeing the crosses of her veins the entire time) and pulled her snug against him. "Alright, hold on—oh, mask, one sec." He ran to tug it on. "Okay, for real."
Peter took a deep, steeling breath, but you couldn't tell it was him under the mask. You really couldn't. The only remnants she could see of him were the whites of the mask's eyes, squinting in and out like they were his own. Other than that it was like Levina was unlearning everything she just found out. She had to make the association all over again that the guy about to fling her thirty feet into the air was the same one that tripped over her in the elevator that all the time. She barely knew Patrick—Peter, sorry. She barely knew Spider-Man. And now both of them were going to use a mode of transportation she was already not excited for. She'd seen him swinging on the news. Not her cup of tea.
"Okay, deep breath," he said, but she wasn't sure which one of them he was talking to. "Hold on tight. Uh, sorry if this is scary. Or weird. This whole thing is weird. Sorry."
A strangled noise came from the back of her throat. A sting ripped through her, making her grit her teeth. She was deathly annoyed and even more embarrassed that she wasn't alone right now. "Right, I'll stop talking—aand up we go!"
With a grunt, there was a thwip of a web. And she was up.
If her vocal chords worked she would've screamed, but something that sounded like a dull chainsaw scraped out of her instead. "Oh my God!"
"Hold on!"
She pressed her face into the shoulder of the Spider-Man suit. Her eyelashes were wisps as the city blurred past her, seeing so little yet so much all at once. She shut her eyes to ward off the dizziness and only clung tighter, trying to take deep, even breaths so she wouldn't shock Peter (SPIDER-MAN!) to death in midair. Her heart was still racing, booming in her ears. This was the strangest feeling in the world. Everything was speeding past her. She was barely clinging to sanity, flopping around like a rag doll, and here she was with New York's most infamous vigilante whom she only met two minutes ago. She was holding onto a stranger, a concept, yet the person beneath it had lived down the hall from her this whole time.
Her eyes opened again and she was assaulted by wind. Honks and tire squeals and rumbles of her pulse blended inside her. She clung tighter to Peter-Man's (oops) shoulders and hoped she could crawl away into herself again. She tried her best to be gone, to slip through the crevices of noise and fall into her heartbeat forever. Let herself go back to her cold, hard bed, the steel walls, the shackle around her neck, the bandages on her arms, the memory of her heart beating so intensely in her that it blew out all the lightbulbs and the scientist convulsed.
It's okay, Wanda said. You did good.
It didn't feel good.
"Almost there," Peter grunted. He whipped up again and she yelped for a second time. There were moments where she thought he was going to drop her, but she almost found herself enjoying when they dipped again. Her hair blew in front of her face and turned the city black.
Peter asked her apartment number. She wasn't sure if she told him or not. Her voice was lost in her, even more than it usually was.
Her stomach was dropping every time she heard the flick of a web. Peter was holding onto her so tight she thought she'd be crushed, but she really didn't mind considering she was a second away from cooking herself on a skewer. The wind barrelled across her face and the noise of it burrowed into her ears. There was so much going on up here, going on inside her, that the dips and rises blended together and she couldn't tell if she was falling or flying. And she couldn't find it in her to care. She shut her eyes and focused on the blackness and the burning under her skin.
"You got a fire escape, right?"
She nodded, coughing, "Window leads to my room."
Peter-Spider-Parker-Man (dear God) dropped down abruptly, tangling Levina's entire stomach. Everything melted down inside her and she was a dream, a ghost, slipping through Peter's grip and becoming intangible. It was a horrible feeling that she kind of liked. It felt like she wasn't here. Like she would wake up somewhere, go through layers and layers of dreams, until she faded into herself without memory.
The sound of a latch popping open. The slide of a window. Levina was not away, she was not dreaming, she was here and it was miserable.
Peter helped her through the window and jumped in after her, webbing the frame and yanking it down to close it. Levina barely noticed. The smell of burnt paper and Boddy's cologne reached her, whispering that she was safe. That this would pass.
"Do you—do you need me to get you anything, uh—"
"Go outside," she heaved a breath, and her fingertips started to spark. "Close the door."
He looked pale as a sheet and desperate to help, but obeyed the second a hiss of air came from her throat, and her veins rippled with the weight of herself.
This happened sometimes. These moments of panic, where she burned green and her mouth filled with acid and she thought she might die. Sometimes it happened every week. Sometimes it took months. And every time she'd bury herself in an alley or go home or if it was really dire, go into a school bathroom and pray it was empty, so she could bite down on her hand to muffle a scream as the sinks shook and the insides of the stall were singed. Janitors kept having to replace doors and fix broken pipes. They didn't know why. She did.
Her lungs clogged up when she took a deep breath, energy bundling in her chest before travelling up, up, up her throat to nestle there, and she couldn't breathe. She used the method she'd been taught as fast as she could before she freaked out again. Her nails curled into her palms, stinging her flesh, pinpricks of static feeling like a kiss that killed.
The method to expel her madness varied. Usually the first step would be to clear her head and discard her memories, but with a literal superhero outside her door and the ghost of Strucker's hands around her neck, it was futile. Memory was all she was surrounded by. She had to diffuse the present instead.
She tucked herself into the static. The noise settled in her brain, a thick buzzing sound that she felt in her jaw. She could feel the energy slicking through her veins, prodding the inside of her skin and shocking her. Five years of this, five years of storm and silence had moulded inside of her, something she could not separate. Something she could only displace. Pressure swam out from her chest and down into her arms, scalding as it went. Her veins cooled around her lungs and grew brighter in her biceps. The static travelled further, relieving her legs and her hips and her shoulders but scarring the insides of her forearms and hands where it gathered. Taking a deep breath, feeling the signs of electricity crossing between her fingertips, she pushed it all out.
It took a lot to get everything out slowly. A lot of energy and a lot of control. Levina was running short of both. Squeezing her eyes shut and trying to relax everything else, static connected between her hands, roping together and firming until a great green ball the size of a baby pumpkin emerged. It lived for a moment, held up by the forces in Levina's hands, before detonating out like a dying star. The green washed over her room. When she opened her eyes, there were fresh burn marks on her walls again and tears were sliding down her face. Her skin had lost its colour.
She choked out a breath, keeling over her bed. It's over, she panted, but her body was taut and still trembling. Her head pounded for a few seconds then stilled. A long, heavy sigh came out of her, and she coughed out an extra spark. It was fine. She was fine.
It took a minute or two of studying her room and breathing heartily to plant herself back in reality. Once her eyes stopped watering and her heart cooled, she wobbled to her door and cracked it open.
She wished she hadn't.
Peter was standing there, back to her, stiff as a board. For a second she thought he was too freaked out to turn around, but then she saw what he was looking at.
Her kitchen table, basking in rays of sun.
And at that table, standing with his hands on his hips, was Boddy.
Oh. Oh.
FUCK!
"What are you doing in my kid's room, son?"
Levina was at a loss for words. She glanced at Peter and he looked horrified. All the colour had left his face and his mouth was hanging open—not like she could blame him. Lawrence Boddy was an ex-S.H.I.E.LD agent and a kick-ass dad. Levina was intimidated every time she forgot to wash the dishes.
"You're home?" She blurted.
Boddy looked cross with her, too. He was pulling that parent-face whenever he was angry or confused or disappointed or in this case, all three. "Where else would I be?"
"Like . . . grocery shopping?"
"I'm retired. It's pizza night. Why would I be grocery shopping."
Levina drew a blank.
"What is this boy doing in your room? And what is with those tights?"
Levina's eyes blew wide. She just realized Peter was still in his suit. Oh God, oh God, oh no.
"They're not tights, um sir—" Peter mumbled, his cheeks flushing pink. The panic was visible in his eyes.
"Turn around!" She waved to Boddy. "Go, go, turn around!" Without knowing what to do, she stepped in front of Peter like that would hide him. "Stop looking!" Her limbs were spread out in a starfish. Peter was still frozen behind her and Boddy was staring at her with the most judgemental eyebrows she'd ever seen.
"Oh my God," Peter said. "Oh my God, oh my God, this is the worst day of my life!"
"Why didn't you tell me he was here!" She hissed back at him.
"I was in shock!"
"I can hear you," Boddy sniped. He glared daggers straight through Levina's skull and into Peter's. "Move outta the way, honey. There's nothing at stake here."
"Forget what you saw," she said first, making her starfish bigger.
"I'll pay you," Peter blabbed. Levina wanted to throw him out the window. "I'm serious, I—I will."
Boddy's face did not change. Surprisingly, he rolled his eyes, a grin tugging at the side of his mouth. "Relax, kid, no bribe necessary." And then, "Can't forget something I already knew."
Levina's arms dropped. Peter dry heaved behind her. What.
Boddy's smile was full now, taking him over completely. He looked so smug crossing his arms. "Why do you think we moved here last year? I was an agent for the best global law enforcement in the world, don't you think I could've afforded something nicer?"
Levina blinked. "Huh?"
"Stark's team asked me to move here. To keep an eye on your fun little friend back there. Said yes because living in the city would be good for you and I owe him a couple favours from back in the day."
"Wait—what?" Levina sputtered. "This whole time, we've been living in this shitty apartment for Iron Man? You knew Patr—Peter was Spider-Man from the beginning?" Levina jerked her thumb back so aggressively it almost took Peter's eye out.
"You knew he was Spider-Man?" Boddy asked Levina.
"Just found out!"
"When!"
"Two minutes ago! Still haven't processed it!"
Peter stepped out from behind Levina, looking petrified and embarrassed. "Your dad's been spying on me?"
"You owe Tony Stark a favour?" Levina glared at Boddy.
"What. Were you doing. In her room." Boddy seethed.
They all stared at each other. It was the second stalemate Levina had been in in less than fifteen minutes. Everything was going so fast. Boddy knew Tony Stark? And didn't tell her? And also didn't tell her her neighbour was a superhero? Who was he?
"I'm gonna throw up," Peter gulped.
"I want answers to my question, please," Boddy ignored him.
Peter and Levina looked at each other. He was white as a sheet—she had never seen anyone this petrified in her entire life. She felt horrible that she put him in this position. There was some weird attempted eye-communication for a bit but it was fruitless. They started talking at the same time.
"I was getting really overwhelmed again so I found this place to hide in an alley behind a gate—"
"I was changing in this alley so I could do my Spider-Man things and I hear this thump behind me and I'm like 'oh no' so I turn around—"
"—there's this guy changing in the alley and I'm like 'oh no' and he turns around and I'm like 'that guy lives in my complex' but I wasn't really thinking straight—"
"—I see her and it's like 'oh I know her, she lives in my complex and goes to school with me what is she doing here'? And then I'm like oh my God she saw me in my suit and then it was like oh my God why is she glowing—"
"—he was just there and it kind of made things worse and then he was in front of me saying—"
"—I have a way to get you home, right? She was like bright green and it was freaking me out a bit but I've seen weirder so I went yeah, I'll take you home, and she looked like she was going to explode so I swung us over here—"
"—it was really scary and I was flying but we came in through the fire escape and I told him to leave and now you're here."
Levina was breathless, heaving to try and get rid of the knot in her stomach. She hadn't been this anxious around Boddy since she met him. His eyebrow was raised so high it could float right off his head. "I did not catch a single word you said."
"Wasn't Peter's fault," Levina said before either of them could talk. Her voice was getting worse, coming out scratchier and harsher than before. "He was trying to help me."
Boddy glanced at Peter to verify this. "Y-yes sir," he asserted, nodding eagerly.
"Well," Boddy sighed, putting his hands back on his hips and looking down at the floor. Levina gulped. This wasn't good. "That's settled. Peter, you want something to drink?"
Peter whipped to Levina. He was blinking excessively and his mouth hung open like a fish. "Um, pardon?"
"We have water, apple juice, chocolate milk if you're into that . . . go on, take a seat! I don't bite. Levina, get him a glass."
He looked even more bewildered. She just shrugged. Boddy did this a lot. He thought it was funny or something, scaring the shit out of people and then getting hospitable. She could never tell when he was mad at her because she half-expected him to wrap her in a hug at any given moment. That was his style: pain in the ass first, safe space second.
And he was a real pain in the ass right now. She should've seen this coming by now, honestly.
As Peter took a tentative seat at their rickety table, Levina stole a glass from the kitchenette where Boddy was. She didn't look at him. "Hey," he caught her and put hands on her shoulder so she had to face him. "Did you handle your moment okay? You hurt?"
"Yep," she said dryly, avoiding eye contact. She shook off his hands and moved away from him. It was hard to ignore his eyes following her, the twinge of remorse in them making her gut churn. She stared at Peter expectantly instead, who was fiddling with his mask on the kitchen table before he noticed the glass. "Um, water's fine," he answered. She was sure Peter didn't miss the way she angled away from her parent as she filled the glass up in the sink. She was sure he didn't miss Boddy's quiet "Honey," and Levina skirting away with the cup before he could touch her again.
When she put the glass down in front of him, his brows were slightly furrowed together. He looked uncomfortable, shifting around in his seat and muttering a "thank you" before taking a sip. Then his eyes were raking over her, studying her, only getting more confused. She sat down in front of him before Boddy could ask her to do anything else. There was a bitterness forming on her tongue and she hated that it had to do with him.
It wasn't like he had to tell her. But he should have, shouldn't he? He should have told her that there was another reason they were here. Sure, it didn't ruin her life or anything, but it wasn't sitting right how Tony Stark, the man Boddy knew took Wanda and Pietro's parents and also saved Levina from the back of a bloody Jeep, had asked him for a favour. She didn't even know the two of them ever spoke. Boddy knew how she felt about Stark and Avengers and the life she was almost swept into. Conflicted. Upset. Robbed of about a million different things. Now, it felt like a million and one.
Peter hadn't stopped staring at her with those hysterical eyes, and although his face was as still as possible, the way he balled his mask up in his hands and kept looking at Boddy confirmed this was overwhelming for him, too. Words had long dried up inside her and the weight in her throat had finally settled so she couldn't get any of them now. Perhaps she'd filled her talking quota for the day. Guess it was time to bust out the sign language.
Peter probably didn't know sign language. Shit.
"You have a lovely home," Peter said awkwardly. His eyes wandered their ceilings and walls, and she knew he was trying to avoid the charred marks splotching the wallpaper. (They had to redo the walls every year. Not fun.)
"Thank you, son," Boddy said kindly. It made her even angrier, because how dare he act so welcoming after he lied to her for that long and that easily. There was the clinking of dishes and closing of cabinets. Her hands curled into fists on the table.
Briefly, her eyes flicked back to Peter's and he caught them eagerly. Sorry, she mouthed to him, cringing. He just kept that mildly terrified expression on his face and whispered back, "I have no idea what's going on."
The chair at the head of the table slid out and Boddy sat with a thump. Peter and Levina stared at each other intently. Neither of them knew where this would go. Peter was confused and Levina was angry, and Boddy was stationed between them both like some sort of oblivious mediator.
The silence was thick and palpable, worse than the one living in Levina's chest. She didn't know what to do. She didn't know Peter. She didn't know Boddy right now, either. Shame was winding up in her again—technically, this was all her fault. She'd lost herself in memory and freaked out and freaked Peter out and now she had to untangle the mess. It had only been half an hour since she learned Peter's name and now she felt like she'd never be able to be normal with him for the rest of her life.
She wondered if he would see what she was thinking, because her eyes felt glossy. It felt like any minute now she'd need to crawl back into her room and scream so quietly that even her atoms could not hear her.
"So," Boddy sighed. He drummed his fingers on the table. "Peter, you wanna stay for dinner? It's pizza night!"
Again, he instantly searched for Levina. She was a little flabbergasted herself. And more upset. A part of her couldn't wait for Peter to leave so she could chew Boddy out a bit, or ask him what his deal was, or steal a tub of ice cream from the freezer as she cried in bed. It wasn't fair that he hasn't told her and it wasn't fair he was pretending things were fine.
"I, uh, actually I got stuff to do," Peter replied as politely as he could without trying to sound scared shitless. "But thank you, really."
"Ah, right. Next time, maybe," he threw Peter a casual wink and Levina just stared down at her hands.
Silence settled. There was too much going on and not enough to say. Boddy wasn't moving from the table and neither was Peter so there wasn't anything Levina could do that wouldn't make at least one of them curious.
Thankfully, a sharp breath was drawn in front of her so she didn't have to sit in uncomfortable silence any longer. Now, uncomfortable conversation was back, like a frisbee made of bricks.
"I'm sorry, I just have to be honest here . . . I'm a little confused," Peter admitted, eyes shifting between the two of them. "How are you a S.H.I.E.L.D agent? And how did you not know? And how did Mr. Stark even ask you to move here?"
Levina caught a glimpse of frustration burrowed inside Peter as he said the last thing. He didn't look too happy that Tony Stark had a connection so close nearby.
"She did know I was an agent," Boddy replied. A guilty look washed over him as he glanced at her. "Just not the Stark bit."
"So if I ask you something, or need something from Mr. Stark, can you tell him?" Peter blurted.
"We aren't that kind of close," Boddy leaned back, crossing his arms. "His head of security, Happy, was the one who relayed the offer to me about moving here."
"Wait, you know Happy! If I tell you something you can tell Happy and he can tell Mr. Stark? If you're like really, really insistent on it?"
They weren't biologically related, but Levina and Boddy's arched brows made them look like they were. Where was this going?
"Um, I guess, but like I said, I don't keep in close contact." He leaned back forward again and started explaining things with his hands like when he tried to teach Levina how to boil pasta. "I haven't said anything important to them since I got here. I'm just a precaution for you. Only reason I'd ever need to talk to them is if you're up to something." A cunning grin lifted the corners of his face. "And as far as I'm concerned, you never are. Because I hate phone calls."
"Oh," Peter said, studying the glint in Boddy's eyes. "Oh! Gotcha."
Levina was lost. There was no more energy in her to speak. She listened quietly as Peter asked more questions about Tony and Boddy had barely any answers to give him. She felt useless. The shock had worn off. Her insides were hollowing again, making room for the silence, and it sat like cold, wispy fog inside her chest.
The conversation quelled at some point. The scraping of chair legs made her snap up. "Well, that settles that," Boddy sighed. "Sure you don't want pizza, Peter?"
"I'm, uh, I'm okay, sir. Thank you though."
Peter stood up and glanced at her again, but she barely noticed. The only thing she could think of was that Boddy, who had always been honest with her about every thing she'd ever lived through, had formed a partnership with the man that ripped her from the only family she'd ever known without telling her. Which wasn't fair to Tony, either—H.Y.D.R.A technically stole her first.
She knew Tony Stark wasn't a bad person, but she also thought Boddy wasn't a liar. Clearly, her judgement had been flawed before.
Peter stood from his chair, mask still crumpled in his hand. "It was nice meeting both of you," his voice cracked and he grimaced. "I . . . better get going. Lots of stuff to do, haha."
"Maybe you could swing by another time," Boddy beamed. "Get it? Spider-Man pun."
"Ye—yeah, really great joke," Peter laughed weakly.
Levina had mentally checked out of the conversation. She was of no use here. So when Peter turned to her and said, "See you tomorrow?" the fog inside her cleared abruptly.
She stared at him. It was a strange thing, to stare at the boy behind the mask. The boy who'd lived down the hall for years. Somewhere inside her, one of the last good somewheres she had in her body, she wondered how she'd only just met him.
She nodded wordlessly with the most feeble smile known to man. That was it. Peter started towards the door with his mask in hand. "Still in your suit, son," Boddy said.
He turned. "Yep, fire escape it is."
Levina followed him. She padded to her bedroom door and slipped inside, Peter on her heels. She avoids Boddy's creasing face as she left the kitchen—he was the only person not used to silent treatment from her, so she hoped he knew she was angry.
Peter looked queasier than ever as her worn, yellow walls surrounded them. He kept peeking back outside the doorway to see if Boddy could watch them from this angle. He seemed so out of place here—a bright suit and a fresh face against scarring ceilings and rickety tiles. Her bedroom was full of shame. It wasn't fair to have someone like Peter standing in it.
Wind fluttered Peter's curls as he popped the window open. He started to slide one foot out, then stopped. So did Levina. They were just there, staring at each other, sandwiched between billions of metaphysical elephants in this room.
"Sorry," she rasped to him, coiling away from the sound of her voice. It was patchy again, scarcely there, buried beneath tension and humiliation. She wondered what it sounded like to Peter. Her insides revolted at the thought.
"It's um, it's okay, yeah," he replied, glancing at her doorway again. "I'm sorry, too. This is. . . weird."
She nodded a little too harshly.
Peter pulled his leg back into her room and plopped down on the frame of her window. His legs dangled just inches over the floor. "Are you feeling okay now?"
She nodded again.
"Okay, okay, that's good."
There was something else he wanted to say. It was obvious. His heels were knocking against the back of her wall and he kept opening his mouth and closing it. She could practically hear the cogs turning in his big spider-brain.
"What is it?" She asked, wincing when all that came out was a scratch at her throat. Good thing Peter was close enough and anxious enough that he could hear everything.
His cheeks went red. "It's just, uh . . ." He fumbled with his words for a moment before staring down at his hands, "I have another question, but I don't know if it would be like . . . rude, or weird to ask, or something—and I don't want to make you uncomfortable, so."
Her brows furrowed. There were a lot of things she was uncomfortable with. Most things, actually. She hated cars and bees and perfume and pictures. She was sure Peter wouldn't ask her about any of these things, but that was the scary bit. You could explain cars and bees and perfume and pictures. They were all perfectly tangible things that could be aptly discussed. Something she'd never be able to explain was the devastation eroding inside her for years. The waves beating down the acids in her stomach until there was nothing left. That harrowing, hollow feeling carving out her insides. It was not tangible. It was not discussed.
Think about it logically. If she were Peter, she'd want to know some things too. Catching a classmate wired like a neon sign was strange enough, but now her father-figure was a S.H.I.E.L.D agent and her room was covered in burns. It was hard not to get scared at how unexpected everything felt.
Peter was definitely trying to wrap his mind around insanity right now. And though he'd seen stuff like this before, it was probably weird that the worst of it had been a couple doors down all this time.
"Ask," she prompted.
He fidgeted with his mask, puffing out a sigh. "How . . . I mean, where did you get your, uh . . . your thingies." He gestured to her hands. "I mean, your um, green stuff. The powers. Are they powers? Do you call them powers? Sorry."
He burrowed his face in his hands, a flush crawling down his neck. Honestly it was really, really hard not to find it funny. If she hadn't been so sick to her stomach she would've laughed.
She cleared her throat the best she could. It was a normal question to ask so she had to give the normal-est answer she could muster. Peter scooted closer to her and she shuffled a bit to meet him, knots twining in her belly. "When I was twelve—" Her voice was so barren it hurt. She cleared her throat again, and again, and all she felt were the wisps of words scraping along her neck.
"It's okay," Peter smiled a bit. "I've got spidey-ears. Keep going."
Now her cheeks were getting hot, and she was trying to look anywhere else. She hacked a cough again, pressing a fist to her chest. When she met Peter's eyes, they were gentle. Patient. And . . . very pretty. He was very close and his eyes were very pretty.
She coughed one last time and kept going. Her voice was shrill and waning in strength, but Peter seemed to hear just fine. "When I was twelve, I was taken by these scientists. Hydra. They . . . tried stuff on me and I ended up like this." She struggled with herself. Peter still looked lost. "Like Wanda."
He swallowed. "Wanda, like, Wanda Maximoff?" When Levina nodded, he added, "she threw a car at me once."
She didn't have the strength to comment on that last bit—even though throwing cars at a chatty teenager seemed like a very Wanda thing to do. "Avengers saved me one day. Boddy adopted me. Now I'm here." She looked around, wishing she could say more. Wishing she could say everything. "Can't talk well 'cause the trials messed up my vocal chords. Needed speech therapy."
"Oh," Peter said tentatively. His eyes were blown wide and his face was soft. "I'm . . . so sorry. Wow, that just—that's why I've never heard you talk before. And all those big hoodies you wear. And the, uh . . ." he eyed her singed walls, "decor."
She curled into herself. "You know what I wear?"
"Well, yeah," he tilted his head like she was asking a stupid question. "I see you all the time."
A gentle sting pressed against her stomach—the kind she got when chocolate ice cream wafted through the air or a dog turned to look at her. The only sting she loved. It had been a while since it came around. Something about Peter knowing her, seeing her, just as the brooding neighbour girl with the giant sweater, made her feel oddly human. Simple. It was the greatest feeling in the world.
Peter swung half his body out the window again. "Okay, so I'll—"
"Mask," she croaked, grinning crookedly.
He buffered for a minute, blinking and looking down at his hands. "Oh, oh right! Thanks."
Peter was gone again. It was Spider-Man crouched in front of her, whites of his eyes erasing Peter's brown ones out of her memory. Silence shivered through her. He didn't leave. Neither did she. What was she supposed to do in this situation? She still had a dozen more questions and she was sure Peter had double that. They were stuck here. Staring at each other. Like dogs discovering their reflection.
"This is really awkward, isn't it." Peter mustered a laugh. "Your dad is really scary."
She giggled a little too, sandpaper tearing down her throat.
Peter shrugged. "I mean, I won't tell if you won't."
Maybe it was the sun filtering through her open window, but Levina thought she could feel herself getting brighter. The gentle sting came back again, snug against her ribcage. Peter was nice. She didn't know him, like, at all, but he was nice. He'd keep his word.
"Deal," she rasped.
He was wearing the mask, but she could almost see a smile peeking through the fabric. "Alright, well, uh . . . see you tomorrow, I guess? And if you ever need a chauffeur like this again I'll be around."
"See you tomorrow, Patrick," she grinned at him.
She didn't even gage his response before he launched himself out her window, swinging out into the booming streets of Queens and pointing a finger at her. "That's not sticking!"
me when they are my only form of therapy FIRST PETER/LEVINA INTERACTION I LOVE THEM <33 let's just get this out of the way this chapter is not perfect and it's bothering me but i Promise this is the worst chapter in the book it gets better!! i delayed this chapter SO MUCH bc it wasn't right to me but here it is. sorry. next one will be shorter
i did in fact see no way home and i'm doing my best to stop crying whenever i think abt it so NO SPOILERS!! levina is my coping mechanism and she's perfect and i love her. and yas. boddy knew peter was spider-man this whole time. genius. he's heavily involved with this story so i had to get this out there early on!! i would say he's peter's new father figure but then he would die so
just for some reference on boddy's backstory: he was a high-ranking agent at SHIELD and in my head he appeared in iron man 2 and avengers with coulson/fury!! (and he's old so he was in captain marvel as well). levina has beef with tony for very complex reasons we will get into later and i'm so excited to explore how it ties into the story it makes every character so much more defined in their relationship to levina and i love it so much!! literally levina and tony are so compelling to me their ideals and attitudes really form an interesting dynamic between them
and if u see a character mentioned that u don't recognize. let's say for example. a woman with plant powers. a plant-themed alias, perhaps. she is coming to a sam wilson fic near you.
hopefully by the time u are reading this i've gotten over no way home. it may take years. centuries even. thank you for reading <3
—perrie