FOUR; 𝒎𝒚 𝒏𝒂𝒎𝒆'𝒔 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒄𝒍𝒂𝒓𝒂!
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"DUDE, ARE YOU sure you want to keep lying to her?"
Peter shot Ned a withering glance, leaning away from the railing. Now was not the time to go over the ethical codes of Spider-Man conduct. Not when he was suffering from crushing anxiety and feeling like someone had lit his insides on fire.
From this exact building's rooftop and this precise angle, he could see the curb, sidewalk and entrance of the burger joint that Clara Rose—a.k.a really cute thief—had promised to meet him in.
"I told you I'm not lying. I'm protecting my identity from a burglar," Peter reasoned. Irritated, he fidgeted with the thick collar of his shirt. "And does this shirt look too prudish to you?"
"She can't still be a burglar if she returned your stuff," Ned supported, folding his arms over the stone bannister to look over the street. "And she even wrote over your notes. Remember how you didn't talk to me for a day because I underlined a sentence?"
"Because you used green. Green on my red and blue notes!"
"Green is—"
"—gross, Ned. Gross. I don't care what Bob Ross says."
"No, you hate green because of the Green Goblin."
"That dude should really do better. Green ain't his colour."
Peter turned to grab his backpack off the ground and opened a front zip to wrestle out the panda-bear keychain he'd gotten for her. When he found it, he looped it around his index and closed it safely in his palm.
"You've got problems, Pete." Tell me something I don't know, he thought to himself. In his periphery, he saw Ned lean over the railing as if taking a closer look. "Don't freak out, but a bizarrely cute girl just crossed the street."
Peter scrambled to his side like a ball of fire and tiptoed for a proper glance. A slow sigh rolled out once he spotted the person he wanted quietly walking toward the diner.
"That's her," he said with a full-fledged smile.
"You weren't kidding," Ned whispered, awed. "She is Halle Bailey-cute. Those are super rare."
"I told you so. And Sticky Fingers is wearing her glasses."
Peter swore no one looked sweeter than Clara Rose—it was confirmed—and especially in those huge, black horn-rimmed glasses. It was too oversized for her face, just like her witty graphic t-shirt which was definitely another hand-me-down, and a con of these glasses; they hid her big doe eyes. She had her headphones plugged in, and thanks to super-sensitive hearing, he heard her listening to The Neighbourhood. He wondered for a moment how Clara Rose was so inherently unaware of how incredible she was.
"Sticky who now?" Ned cut into his reverie.
Peter wriggled his hands at him with a knowing look. "Shifty hands of a cute thief. Sticky fingers. I thought it was implied."
"Now that's gross. And so inappropriate." Ned furrowed his brows and craned his head to admire the ornament that hung from Peter's index. "Is that a keychain? A keychain for the cute thief?"
Peter snuck it away with a scowl. "Yeah, and?"
Ned cocked a brow in realization. "I thought you said burglars deserved lockup."
"Some burglars. I said some."
"Male burglars."
"I'm not sexist!"
"Tell the girl the truth," Ned warned seriously. "What if she likes you back and finds out you were lying to her the whole time?"
Peter made a noise at the back of his throat. "She doesn't like me."
"Okay, what if you eventually do?"
"I don't like her either," he lied.
There was a less meaningful and more potent word for what Peter felt. He preferred her. Like how he preferred Korean strawberries over the Australian ones. Like how he preferred his regular suit to the Iron Spider suit. Or how he preferred Clara Rose over every other girl in the world...
Ned pursed a pouty face, making kissing noises at Peter. "No, you lurv her."
Peter pulled a deadpan, tightening the gauntlets around his wrist. "That's very mature of you."
"You caught the lurv-bug."
"Ew. Stop."
"Says the disguised superhero who's disguising himself as a hot guy for a date."
"We're going to study together. That hardly counts as a date." Although every part of him hoped it did. "Anyways, wish me luck."
"Don't screw it up, Peter!"
And soon, Peter was swinging. The drill was effortless: thwip, pull, release and fly. And god, he could never seem to get sick of it—the air, the thrill, the depth. It was so easy now to sneak, to escape, to lie. It was almost like breathing to fall from great heights with nothing but a narrow string of webs to catch him. Kind of like how he imagined life; no matter how hard you try, some fuck ups were simply created to rescue you. Said no one ever, you misanthrope.
He balanced himself over a beam of the long awning and plunged to a deft drop a few meters away from Clara Rose, who was now sitting by the curb and holding her cheeks to watch the cars fly past her. When he looked to the rooftop to boost his morale, Ned was there, shooting him thumbs-ups.
Adjusting his shirt and murmuring his best friend's affirmation under his breath, he took a step closer. Tapped her shoulder.
Clara Rose glimpsed up at Peter and in that split second he decided he wasn't going to let go. He just couldn't. She smiled—flashing her teeth and dimples—and yes, space and time had begun to collide into a single point in this plane of reality.
"Hi Percy," she said.
No, not true. It was never too easy to lie.
∞
"I can't believe you're a year older than me. All this time, I thought you were my age," Clara said, duly surprised, and scribbled down her mathematical rough work behind her notebook.
"Yeah..."
"And I can't believe you hate my favourite colour!"
"Yeah..."
She looked up from her book to frown. "Yeah?"
He sighed. "Yeah."
Peter was officially standing at cross-purposes with his disguise-guise situation. So, he asked: when was a thief not a thief? Perhaps when the thief was the cutest girl he'd ever seen, a little dumb, and didn't mean her crime. Especially when she's returned everything she stole.
But what if Clara Rose stole for a living? How was he certain and sure that she wasn't going about her day pick-pocketing strangers, swiping knick-knacks off grocery aisles, and just generally being a bad person and a menace to society? He shouldn't give the verdict without considering reality, but it was hard not to.
He genuinely looked at her, sans her distracting face. The brittle skin on her knuckles, the Queens Community Bank symbol on her pen, and the shrivelled lines on her t-shirt. And he knew this feeling in his stomach because he'd felt it before.
Clara shook the bitten pen a few times to get it to work before trying to etch her answers in. Her face twisted into an ashamed grimace as she jerked it harder and wrote again.
Peter rolled his gel pen across the table. It hit the edge of her notebook and rested on the clip.
She eyed it and then him. A barely-there smile curved at the edge of her lips as she accepted it. Finally, a smile! "Thanks."
"You can keep it," he offered.
Somehow, this made her even more distressed. She clicked on it and began to write. "Thank you," she repeated softly.
He'd visited the FEAST shelter many times with Aunt May, volunteered even more, and was there enough to know people apart from their day-to-day schedules. It was wrong, so disgustingly wrong—but, Clara Rose looked like them.
He widened his eyes at the belittling thought and looked away. Them? There's a variety now? Spider-Man discriminates against people of the community, huh? See, he had hung around long enough to know that people turned to shortcuts for the hard parts, but it was only one side of the problem he was seeing. Who knows what Clara Rose has to go through? And truly, he wasn't ready to ask.
It didn't make sense how on earth he'd ended up having a 'thing' for this girl. Sure she was the most effortlessly lovable person he'd encountered, but other than that, Clara Rose was not a great deal. And he meant that in the nicest way possible. She routinely shoplifted, she hardly ever smiled, she was a verified cynic. Yet—after everything—Peter just couldn't help but want her around.
A small hand snapped in front of Peter's face and made him blink. "Percy? Hey, hi. Lost you for a moment." Clara Rose pointed to the waitress who stood patiently beside him, filling their coffee cups. "Are you hungry?"
He stared at Clara Rose dubiously. "Are you?"
She glanced at the menu board behind for a brief second. An infinitesimal strain flickered between her slim brows when she pushed her glasses up her nose. He was desperate to be steadfast in his need to buy her all the burgers she wanted, but sadly he wasn't as audacious as Percy was with girls. He was Peter, and he didn't want to impose.
Clara Rose shook her head. "Coffee's enough. Besides, I have dinner waiting at home."
Don't feel bad, don't feel bad... "Okay. Sure. I'm good, too." He wasn't, he really wasn't. His stomach was getting ready to mimic the mating sounds of whales.
Clara Rose went back to finishing the last set of equations Peter had guided her through. It was almost too much to bear the weight of engrossment, to concentrate on making the technique easy for her when all he could think about was tempting another smile out of those vaguely pouting lips. He was too deep in imagining what it would be like to be her boyfriend—it wouldn't entail a lot; possibly a lot of Netflix and making sandwiches;— but at least he wouldn't have to pretend not to notice her glances or to be someone else entirely.
He came to understand that dating Clara Rose would be the most dynamite thing in the world. It'd be like having a best friend he wanted to kiss all the time. Oh wow, kissing Clara Rose...
Clara slid the notebook toward him, poking the pen behind her ear. "I think I've got it this time. I used the unit analysis method just like you said."
Peter pursed his lips and scanned the page. She'd gotten one wrong out of the seven, which was a pretty good improvement. When he looked up, she was eagerly watching him, a little nervous. A little inquisitive even. She's so cute I want to diiiiiie.
"What?" he asked, his voice going breathy. He cleared his throat to phase it out.
"Are you sure Peter Parker's the smartest in your class?" she questioned with a playful smile. "I've never met him, but I think you're much smarter than him."
"Well, I guess so." He grinned faintly. Peter Parker was definitely smarter, just not fortuitous enough to hang out with this girl. "He's alright. Intermediate or somewhere there. And thanks."
"No hate, of course. I like Spider-Man. He's a selfless guy."
Peter tried very hard not to laugh out loud in delight, hiding his tight fists under the table. She said selfless, not sexy. Calm the hell down. Clara Rose sat on her haunches, laughing along, and leaned her arms over the table. So close until he could smell the delicate scent of laundry detergent.
"Do you know he still hides his backpack in the same alley?" she whispered at him, laughing under her breath. "I went there yesterday and saw it webbed to a wall."
"He's... an idiot."
She snorted. "I concur."
Peter eyed her carefully. "And you didn't take it?" he asked, calmly gauging her expression.
Clara Rose frowned and sat back on the seat. Shame flickered for half an iota before it too escaped. "What? No, never. I wouldn't steal from Spider-Man again."
"But, you'd steal from..."
A soft eyebrow lifted on her baffled face. "Steal from..."
"Just, in the manner of speaking, have you—before?"
She flashed him a menacing look, vaguely concealing her despair. It was obvious she was hurt. Her voice was fierce when she asked, "Do you think I would?"
His words came out fast, like a reflex. "I don't know. I mean I'd only assume—it's not like you—"
"Is that a yes?" she snapped.
He sighed in frustration. "I don't know you very well. So, I don't really know."
"You don't know me very well?" she repeated sceptically. "Apparently."
"Maybe you have, maybe you haven't. I'm not judging anyone, okay?"
She glared at him, dark eyes too miserable.
"Clara Rose," he strained to say quickly. He didn't comprehend what to follow it with. He just liked saying her name out loud.
"You're a dick," she said, slight tears gathering at the corner of her eyes. She subdued it by slamming her notebooks close and pushing out of her seat with her bag in tow. Before she took another step forward, she dug back into her book bag, found his pen, and slammed it in front of him.
"Just in case you thought I nicked it," she said and left him behind.
Peter took two seconds to collect his own thoughts and personal effects; one to curse at every distrustful instinct that pushed him to humiliate Clara Rose, another to figure out a believable rationale for his suspicion. The latter was mutable, he couldn't tell her that he believed she stole for a living because she was poor. No, that would earn him a literal slap on his face.
He stuffed the panda keychain in his jacket before he fiddled with the money in his other hand. He saw three coins and a dollar bill stacked neatly beside Clara's cup of coffee. Damn it all to freaking hell.
"Clara Rose! Hey, wait up!" he called out, stepping out onto the pavement. The muggy evening air jolted him as he sprinted past the oncoming pedestrians and across the barren street.
Her gaunt shoulders hunched with the weight of her satchel and she was in the midst of pulling her long choppy hair into a ponytail. Peter caught up to her, his legs covered twice the distance as hers, also spider-speed, and walked backwards in front of her.
"I didn't mean to upset you. I was such an idiot to even... I don't know, that was rude," he told her desperately. He strived to hold his speed with hers, but thankfully she'd slowed down for him to maintain his equilibrium.
She didn't look at him; she looked at her shoes instead. Her arms folded around her chest safely.
"I'm sorry, Clara Rose," he managed.
"Stop calling me that. My name's just Clara."
"I'm sorry... Clara," he fixed quietly, smothering his aversion. He didn't like mincing her beautiful name in half.
She flickered a blank look up at him, but it worked wonders. At least he was worthy of a look. He held her shoulder to stop her tracks and bring her aside, just under the amber pool of a streetlight above them. It was strange how skeletal she was, and it wasn't the attractive kind at all. And too cold—he couldn't feel the warmth of her skin.
Immediately, she pushed off his hand. "You honestly believe I..." she fumbled, her voice hoarse as she fought with her control. Her doe eyes were small and tormented.
"I know I'm not doing it easy. Frankly, I don't look like it, too. I've stolen before, Percy, yes"—cue Peter's disgruntled sigh—"but not because I wanted to. No one ever grows up dreaming to be a thief. It's wrong. It's lazy to find an escape. But, I want to look nice, too. Smell nice. Maybe not skip a meal every damn day. I don't have a choice, do I?"
Her voice and face went flat. "So, you don't get to write me off as a bad person because of my unavoidable choices."
Peter took a moment to come up with a good response. Something that wouldn't make her cry, kick his shin or never talk to him again.
"You're not a bad person," he insisted in a quiet voice. He tried hard to make those few words sound as sincere as he felt.
Her eyes were still vacant. "You looked at me like I was."
"I know. Because I didn't understand before. But, I still won't tell you that it'll get better or that it's okay. You do bad things, Clara Rose, but that doesn't mean you're bad. It just means you're human."
Clara Rose looked up at him. And her lips curved upward to form a tiny smile.
"And possibly just a bit down on luck." He pressed his index and thumb together to show her. "Like yay bit. Doesn't even count."
A glum, broken laugh left her and she sniffled gently. And a part of Peter wanted her to say thanks or even hug him, but it seemed like too much to ask. Maybe he should hug her, but he didn't want to come up with the short end of the stick.
She pushed her bag higher over her shoulder and slouched even more. What the hell did she keep in that anyway? Even the weight of all those keychains would've weight kilos by itself.
"I better go," Clara Rose mumbled, looking behind her shoulder to the pavement.
He stared at her guarded gaze, unable to stop her from leaving so soon. He hadn't even offered her smoothies yet. But, he went ahead with his question anyway.
"Can I walk you home?"
Her lips parted in surprise. "Oh."
"I'll buy us smoothies," he suggested. "My friend told me it's like a before-you-die-kind of drink. And it's better enjoyed with a... pretty girl."
Her smile turned shy; the type that exploded a stick of emotional dynamite in his head.
"You are," he added quickly. "You're the pretty...—"
She nodded shakily. "Yeah, I um. I got that. Yes. I mean I'll come."
Her returning smile almost broke his ribs from the vigour of how much his heart pounded. She stepped to the flank to allow him past her first but he walked forward to pause by her side.
"I like green, too, you know," he decided with a mischievous smile as they began to plod down the empty pavement.
She smiled, her shoes still whistling a symphony for her expression. "No, you don't."
He shook his head sadly. "Seriously, it's gross. Green smoothies belong in hell. With Hitler's sad beverage menu."
"What about the Amazon jungle? That's a nice green. Or oh, Kermit the Frog!"
"You can't convince me, Clara Rose—"
"Mike Wazowski," she trailed off.
"—or you can. Damn it."
∞
peter parker with a crush is my favourite thing to write about, and I will not stop for anything or anyone on this wretched planet.