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Fuck. He barely had time to think it, before he was pulling back hard on the synthetic rope that trailed from his wrist to the back of Soonyoung’s jacket.
Lucky for both of them, Soonyoung was the type to actually zip up his jacket, otherwise he probably would have slid right out of it with the force Wonwoo pulled him back with. Nevertheless, he jerked backward, out of the way of the car he had blindly walked into the path of.
Junhui was still in the middle of shrieking when Soonyoung fell back into his and Jihoon’s arms.
Wonwoo released the rope of web with another tap of his fingers and didn’t hang around to answer questions, though he heard shouts of surprise and confusion as he shot up into the sky and away from Soonyoung.
Stupid and reckless. How would he survive without Wonwoo ready to have his back every other week. One of these days he’s really gonna get himself into trouble. Who walks out into the road without looking, anyways?
Wonwoo landed on the roof of a nearby five story bank, and drifted to its center, not wanting any of the boys he had just left-- run away from -- to see the top of his head.
He sat down on the opposite edge of the building from where he had spotted Soonyoung charging into traffic, taking out his phone from a concealed pocket to check the time.
It had only been thirty minutes since he’d started patrol and already he’d caught Soonyoung in trouble.
This was going to be a long night.
◧
When Wonwoo saw the uber Soonyoung had called from the ice cream parlor, that he had gone into with Jun and Jihoon a few hours before, going in a different direction than where Wonwoo knew his apartment was, he felt compelled to follow.
He couldn’t do this with everyone, but if ever he saw someone he knew get into someone else’s car by themselves, he needed to follow, just to make sure they were taken to their home, and not some uber driver serial killer’s.
He couldn’t tell if it was just his own anxiety, the heavy settle of dread in his stomach at the utter darkness of night at this hour, or a legitimate sense of something wrong, but he followed the car for a mile before it pulled over into an empty parking lot. Everything that wasn’t a nightclub or a Seven-Eleven-- or apparently the twenty four hour ice cream parlor Soonyoung had come out of-- was closed by one am on a Friday night and Wonwoo couldn’t see any window lights surrounding the lot, so he slowly dropped down behind a corner of the office building that ran the perimeter of the space.
He waited. And waited. And no one got out of the car.
He couldn’t even hear talking coming from it, which, granted he was at least fifty yards away, but super hearing and all.
He considered his options. Wait longer, because you already saved him once today, and maybe you’re wrong. Maybe Soonyoung has a boyfriend that’s an uber driver, and a kink for car sex at one in the morning in an empty parking lot. Even though he really doubted that that was true, it still settled something bitter and jealousy green into his stomach at the prospect of it.
When Wonwoo had been standing there for two minutes, knowing it hadn’t been long, but feeling the heavy dread in his stomach all the same, he decided enough was enough. He could seem like a perv or vigilante stalker, as long as he could make sure Soonyoung wasn’t getting raped or murdered.
He slunk into the parking lot, shadows concealing him, as the only street lamp around was down the street and flickering. Gotta love New York.
When he made it to the car, he paused for just a second to listen. He heard nothing, then, something that sounded like a gasp of pain-- or pleasure, but either way was enough proof of suspicion.
He quickly went around the car and flung open a door to the backseat.
Before he could think, he had instinctively grabbed Soonyoung by the arm and yanked him out from under a greasy, very one-a.m.-in-New-York , middle aged white guy, who’s grip on Soonyoung’s neck slipped at the sight of Wonwoo, or really, Spiderman pulling Soonyoung away.
Soonyoung cried out and gasped for air as the man’s hands lost hold on his neck and he fell out of the car seat onto his ass, Wonwoo still dragging him across the gravel until he was far away enough from the car that Wonwoo could yank out the man next. He wished later that he could say he had thrown the man out of the car less carefully than he had Soonyoung, but in his haste to free him, he had probably done Soonyoung worse.
Wonwoo dragged the man, strong grip on the man’s jacket, and he fell on his knees, which were bare, pants and boxers pulled down to his ankles.
Wonwoo punched him, fast, hard, and strong, in the face, and felt something of the fire in his stomach settle when he felt the crack of bone in the man’s nose.
The man yelled and put his arms up to shield himself, but Wonwoo didn’t hit an injured man if he could avoid it-- even if this guy deserved to die for what he’d tried to pull .
He grabbed the man’s arms and manhandled him until he was on his stomach, and Wonwoo was wrapping thick synthetic webbing around his wrists. He felt no sympathy at the cry the man gave out when his bare front hit the cement of the parking lot, and stuck a web across the man’s whole body and to the ground, just for good measure.
He took out one of the capsules Jihoon had just finished engineering from his little suit pocket and dropped it next to the man’s face and crushed it with his foot. He didn’t see the gas escape, but the man’s groans and curses ceased a second later. Out cold.
Wonwoo took out his phone and texted the police-- they have a special relationship that way-- before turning back to look at Soonyoung.
He was still on the ground, terrified and disheveled. His hair stuck up in the front and under his jacket, his shirt was hiked up asymmetrically and his jacket itself hung off of one arm-- unzipped .
Wonwoo felt the brief urge to turn back and step on the man’s back until his dick was shredded into the ground because what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck -- but he approached Soonyoung and crouched down, hands raised defensively, like he was approaching a wild animal.
Soonyoung stared at him while he slowly got closer, still terrified, and Wonwoo thought he really might try to run back into whatever wood he must have wandered out of, deer in headlights .
“Are you okay?”
Something in Soonyoung’s face twisted away from terror. Wonwoo could see him struggling to move his mouth for the words that couldn’t come.
Finally he said, “Jeon Wonwoo?”
Wonwoo did his very best not to react, but the scream of FUCK in is head, was almost literally audible.
He re-processed the question for a second, cursed again internally, because fuck, you knew this would happen, and you talked to him anyways, what the fuck? But then, gathered himself, doing his best impression of literally anyone else to say, “ Sorry ?”
It was feeble at best, Wonwoo’s baritone a little higher was still his voice .
It seemed Soonyoung thought so as well. “Wonwoo? Is that you? What the fuck? ”
Soonyoung’s own voice was higher pitched and shaky, and he finally looked away from Wonwoo, subconsciously clutching at the other arm of his jacket that hung off of him, peeking around Wonwoo to see the man, face down on the pavement. He stared, shell-shocked for a moment, before snapping to and quickly giving all his attention to Wonwoo.
It was only thanks to his spiderman reflexes that Wonwoo ducked backward out of Soonyoung’s reach when he tried to grab the mask off of his head.
“Hey-” he said in his real voice, but quickly corrected himself- “ hey, don’t do that .” Wonwoo was throwing his voice every which way, trying to find something that sounded natural.
“Let me see your face! I know it’s you!” Soonyoung leaned forward to swipe at him again, but winced, and his hands flew back from reaching to unmask Wonwoo to his own ass. He pressed on the base of his spine carefully, and cringed. Something in Wonwoo squeezed with guilt as he recalled dragging him across the ground to where he sat.
“ I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m sorry for throwing you around -” He’d meant to go on but his voice sounded obviously his own, even with the weird pitch and edge to it, so he stopped abruptly.
Soonyoung made to get up but collapsed back down, groaning. Wonwoo felt his stomach tighten, but got quickly to his own feet to help Soonyoung stand, with an arm carefully put around his waist, pulling Soonyoung’s jacket clad arm around his own shoulders.
Soonyoung’s features were twisted with pain the entire way up, but once he was steady, he looked back into his face-- at his mask really, but Wonwoo felt that might as well not have been there-- inches away from his own. He lifted his hand from where Wonwoo held it on over his shoulders and half heartedly tugged at his mask, pulling it away from his ear only to let it snap back flat onto his head.
“I know it’s you, Wonwoo, but thanks anyways.”
Wonwoo blushed and was on the point of refuting when he heard distant police sirens.
Granted, with his hearing, it was never too difficult to distinguish sirens in New York at night, but he could tell these ones were getting closer.
“I-” he pitched his voice higher again, and for good measure, hardly breathed the words at all- “ I have to go, the police will take you home -”
“No!” Soonyoung ‘no’ sounded like a dog's yip- “Wait! Don’t leave me by myself.” He brought his voice down lower self consciously as he said, “I don’t want to be out here alone.”
Whatever internal organs that Soonyoung had not yet affected all squeezed with sympathy and Wonwoo almost faltered. But, “No. I can’t.” Oops the voice again- “ The police and I have a special relationship that involves them doing what I say, but also having a warrant for my arrest. ” He paused. “ I’m only going up there ,” he let go of Soonyoung’s arm again to point to the rooftop of the office building, “ I’ll follow the squad cars and make sure you get home safe .”
Soonyoung looked at him doubtfully.
“ I promise .”
He tugged the jacket back over Soonyoung as he set him down on a bench at the base of the office building and then straightened up. Police sirens right around the corner.
Wonwoo began to back up from Soonyoung, who was still looking at him, a little lost and a little scared. “ If the police try to take you in, tell them you want to go home-- or to a hospital if you want. They have to let you go, legally, you haven’t done anything wrong, but they might ask you to come in tomorrow .”
Wonwoo raised a hand in goodbye and then shot out a rope of web to the top of the office building, and pulled himself up. He could see Soonyoung’s head turn up to follow his trajectory before he reached the roof.
The squad cars made it to the lot barely three seconds after he had made it to the rooftop, and a couple officers rushed Soonyoung.
Even from up here, Wonwoo could see him looking up at the roof every few seconds, but he could hear that Soonyoung wasn’t saying anything about him.
Eventually, Soonyoung and the man -- still unconscious-- were put in separate cars and taken away. Wonwoo followed the one with Soonyoung until it pulled over in front of his apartment.
He watched him get out of the car, and a police woman escorted him to the door, telling him how they would appreciate it if he could stop by the station for some follow up questions. Soonyoung acquiesced noncommittally before shutting the door in her face.
Wonwoo could hear Soonyoung going up the stairs to the third floor, and heard his mother’s concerned voice when he reached her. Concern turned to terror and then Wonwoo could hear both of them crying, and tactfully took his leave.
◧
Soonyoung wasn’t back to school by Monday, but he came on Tuesday.
He approached him in their Physics class-- the only one they shared-- which wasn’t out of the ordinary, because they sat next to each other.
“Do anything interesting over the weekend? Have any... Friday night plans?” Wonwoo looked up at him from where he had been staring a hole into the pages of a book he wasn’t really interested in.
Soonyoung had a scarf on, which, it’s winter so that’s fair , but Wonwoo could tell he was turning his shoulders, more than his indubitably bruised neck, to look at him.
His throat filled with stuck words. “Uh… no, I thought you and Jihoon were going out or something?”
“Yeah? Did he mention it or did you maybe see us out?” Soonyoung said everything slow, like he was waiting for any single word to break Wonwoo’s facade.
He was staring right into Wonwoo’s eyes, and it was a testament to his acting abilities that Wonwoo didn’t look away.
“He mentioned it. Why? Did you see me or something? Is that why you’re being weird?” Wonwoo finally had to break eye contact and looked back to his book. It was upside down.
“Oh, no. Just wondering.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Soonyoung look slowly away from him and to the front of the room as class began.
◧
“I think I know who Spiderman is.”
Jihoon looked at Soonyoung-- rather unimpressed-- as he sat down across from him at their usual lunch table.
Junhui found the declaration a bit more shocking. “What!? Who!?”
Soonyoung smiled smugly. “You won’t believe me if I tell you.”
Jun looked put off. “Yes, we will. Who is it?”
Soonyoung raised his eyebrows at Jihoon, who rolled his eyes and said, “Pray tell, Soonyoung.”
“It’s Wonwoo .”
Jihoon legitimately started at this confession, and couldn’t hide a hacking cough that seized him when he choked on the water he had been drinking.
Jun gasped and patted him on the back, looking amazed. “How do you know?”
“Well, you know how he saved me on Friday after I left you guys..” Soonyoung trailed off, suddenly looking apprehensive.
His parents had spoken to Jihoon and Junhui about what had happened, and they had done their best to comfort him as soon as they saw him, but he had made it clear he didn’t want to talk about it.
Once Jihoon stopped coughing, he said, gently , “Yes,” waiting for him to go one.
“Well he talked to me, and it was Wonwoo’s voice!” Soonyoung had regained his enthusiasm.
Jihoon briefly promised himself to slapWonwoo the next time he saw him, but didn’t miss a beat. “Is that all? I thought you would’ve seen his face or something. Maybe got a picture. That’s nothing, this city is huge! You think Wonwoo’s the only one who sounds like Wonwoo?”
Soonyoung pouted at him, “I think I would recognize my own lab partner’s voice. Besides when I asked if it was him, he got all flustered and started talking in this weird fake voice and pretending he didn’t know what I was talking about!”
Jihoon was really going to kill Wonwoo.
“I think that’s permissible, when someone who you just saved starts grilling you about your secret identity.”
Soonyoung made an affronted sound and turned his focus to Jun. “You believe me, right? It was totally Wonwoo, same height and everything.”
Jun made a thoughtful face, “Maybe, but I mean, I’m the same height as Wonwoo, and I don’t think it’s impossible that someone could have a really similar voice to his.”
“Yeah, exactly. How do you know it wasn’t just Jun making his voice deeper?”
Soonyoung frowned at Jihoon again. “It was Wonwoo . I swear!”
“Uh huh, okay. Sure.”
Soonyoung groaned dramatically and slumped into the table.
◧
“So, Soonyoung knows you’re Spiderman. That’s new.”
Wonwoo blanches at Jihoon’s accusation, not even an accusation, but whispered in Jihoon’s most passive voice, it sounded threatening.
Wonwoo groans as he turns off their bunsen burner. Advanced Chemistry and Physics in the same year, because Wonwoo really must have a death wish. “He told you? Fuck, I thought he’d forget.”
“No, stupid ,” Jihoons drops the careful whisper for an angry hiss, “why would he forget that a city superhero is actually definitely his Physics lab partner??”
Wonwoo groans again, avoiding Jihoon’s glare. “I don’t know, I thought I threw him off with the voices maybe…” He trailed off. Jihoon looked ready to kill him.
“I can’t believe, after all this, after all the time and effort I put in to help you keep this a secret, you let Soonyoung know who you are in seconds by opening your stupid mouth.”
“He doesn’t know anything. He just thinks he does.”
“Wonwoo. You are Spiderman.”
Wonwoo shushes him as another pair pass their lab station.
“So? He can’t prove anything.”
Jihoon sighs defeatedly. “Yeah, well what are you gonna do next time he steps into traffic? Or the McDonald’s he works at gets robbed? Or he gets into another car by himself and…” He doesn’t finish.
“I’ll still keep him out of trouble, I’ll just be more careful. Didn’t you say it’s possible to install a voice modulator in the suit? I’ll just pretend that I have no idea who ‘Wonwoo’ is. He’ll give up eventually if I keep it up for long enough. Besides, he only knows me from Physics, and from you, so it’s not like he knows my voice that well in the first place--”
“Even though you would like him to.” Jihoon smirks at him.
Wonwoo frowns.
“Shut up asshole.”
◧
Wonwoo starts his night at Soonyoung’s house again, as he had been since the last Friday, but he’s surprised when Soonyoung actually walks out, backpack slung over one shoulder.
He only has time to be confused that he would be out after dark so soon after Friday as he follows Soonyoung soundlessly down the road, by way of the rooftops.
It’s early, and you can still see light behind the skyscrapers of downtown.
He follows Soonyoung for a couple blocks until the streets get a little more crowded, then he stops, because Soonyoung stops.
He’s stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, a few winter’s evening stragglers walking around him without a second thought. Suddenly, he turns toward the street, and walks through two parked cars straight into the road .
Wonwoo’s instincts kick in, and he drops like a stone, swinging down on a rope of webbing, and catching Soonyoung up with him right before a car makes contact.
He’s sure Soonyoung was planning this, but he still feels him startle and tense as Wonwoo holds him tightly with one arm, the other pulling them to a low rooftop across the street.
When they land, Wonwoo separates himself from Soonyoung as quickly as possible.
“What did you think you were doing !?” He’s yelling, not so loud that people below would hear, but loud enough. Also, he’s forgetting to put on a weird voice, but that doesn’t seem important right now.
“What are you? Suicidal? That was crazy !” Soonyoung stumbles away from him and pouts. Wonwoo’s heart strings twist, but he’s still angry.
“I was waiting for you. I knew you would get me.”
“No, you didn’t! I could’ve been across the city! There’s probably someone getting mugged right now that I could have saved instead! There’s no way you could be sure I was around! And what if I hadn’t made it in time? That car could’ve killed you !”
Soonyoung shifted, uncomfortable. “Yeah, I guess.” His voice was quiet, strained.
Wonwoo settled his nerves enough to see that his eyes were glossy.
“Are you okay?”
Soonyoung turned away from him, hiding his face. “I’m f-” he hiccuped- “fine.”
Wonwoo took a step toward him, but Soonyoung leaned away.
“Were you.. Were you trying to kill yourself?”
He looked up and he was crying. “No! I don’t- I didn’t mean to! I just wanted to see if you were there!”
Wonwoo stays quiet for a minute. Long enough to remember that Soonyoung can still recognize his voice.
Fuck it, he already knows what I sound like, I’m still not gonna tell him he’s right.
“Are you okay then? Really?”
Soonyoung nodded, wiping tears from his eyes. They were getting puffy and he was still pouting and Wonwoo desperately wanted to wipe his eyes himself, but he wouldn’t have been able to do that as Wonwoo, and he certainly wasn’t capable of it as Spiderman.
After an awkward minute of Soonyoung sniffling and cleaning off his face, he smiled, puffy eyelids almost totally obscuring his eyes.
“Thanks for saving me, Wonwoo.”
Wonwoo groaned-- internally of course-- and grabbed Soonyoung’s arm, pulling him close.
He registered Soonyoung’s blush when he wrapped an arm tight around his waist before he pulled him off the rooftop, catching them with a web on the side of the neighbouring building and lowering them slowly to the ground.
When they landed, a couple people who had been waiting to see them-- quite startled after Soonyoung had run into the street-- and a few others who were around were standing around on the sidewalk. Wonwoo loosened his grip on Soonyoung, but let his hand rest on the base of his spine. It felt a little too intimate for a second before he spoke.
“Sorry if you’re still fucked up from the other night. Please don’t go running into any more busy streets. If you want to see me just go to the roof of your building. Maybe I’ll stop by once in a while.” He said all this in a low whisper, as people started to approach them, and then let go of Soonyoung completely, zipping up into the sky before someone could ask for a picture.
◧
Wonwoo visited Soonyoung’s rooftop before packing in for the night.
He was there. He was asleep-- but he was there.
Wonwoo lands quietly on the ledge and moves towards Soonyoung’s sleeping figure, propped up on the door to the stairs going down. He has a frown on his face as he sleeps, and he keeps fidgeting.
Must be a nightmare .
Wonwoo shakes him gently awake.
Soonyoung isn’t wearing the scarf he had on earlier, and Wonwoo cringes at the visible dark purple bruises on either side of his neck.
“Oh!” Soonyoung looks instantly on high alert, but calms down after a second to process Wonwoo. “You came--” He broke off with a slow yawn-- hopelessly endearing-- “I didn’t think you would.”
Wonwoo crouches down in front of him and rocked back on his heels to sit down, pulling his knees to his chest. He felt like a kid watching Soonyoung rub the sleep from his eyes. Maybe he just kept feeling like Soonyoung was a kid, and therefore he was a kid by increasing association.
“Well, I did. Now, what do you want?” Wonwoo didn’t bother to slip into some weird voice.
“So rude, Wonwoo. You should be nicer to your lab partner.”
“I still don’t know who it is you think you know I am,” he cringed a bit at the clumsy wording, “but if all you wanted is to interrogate me, then I have better things to do with my time.”
Soonyoung looked mildly taken aback. He hummed, deliberating. “Maybe you’re not Wonwoo. He’s never this rude to me.”
Wonwoo-- sitting-there-in-his-Spiderman-suit-lying-about-being-Wonwoo -- Wonwoo, felt mildly ashamed.
It’s true he was never rude to Soonyoung at school. He was too nice, too funny-- a little bit stupid when it came to the actual lab, but Wonwoo liked him too much to care.
He thought that in a hypothetical universe where Spiderman wasn’t Wonwoo, Spiderman might not feel the same way about Soonyoung that he did, so he pushed any guilt and embarrassment over the new label of ‘rude to Soonyoung’ and so as to continue being rude to Soonyoung.
“Sorry, but my time is valuable. If you really don’t have anything worthwhile to talk about then I’ll be going.” He stood up and dusted himself off.
He almost took out his phone to check the time, but his inner Jihoon said, don’t be stupid, he knows what your phone case looks like and even if he doesn’t he could easily find out . Instead he made a sort of abortive move to the pocket where it was stowed, tight to his hip. He ended up stretching his arms across his body in a ‘loosening up’ exercise. Smooth, Wonwoo, real smooth .
Soonyoung looked like he was struggling to find something to say that could make him want to stay.
He did-- of course-- already want to stay, but it was already long past midnight, and he had to finish a lab report. For Physics .
“Can’t you just take off your mask really quick? I promise I won't tell anyone! Even if you aren’t Wonwoo.” Wonwoo might have tricked himself into thinking he said the last part with some disappointment, but he had to go.
“No way, no one’s supposed to know who I am. That’s kind of the entire point.”
“Well, you should think about that next time you talk to someone who knows your voice, Wonwoo.” Soonyoung grinned up at him, still sitting.
“You can pretend you’re right if you want, but I still don’t know who you’re talking about.” Wonwoo adjusted his web shooters, just for something to do with his hands, and he realized something. “I don’t even know your name--” supposedly-- “so you can’t really assume I know who ‘Wonwoo’ is.”
Soonyoung maintained his smile. “Okay. Sure, Wonwoo. I’ll play your little game. I’m Kwon Soonyoung. Stanton High School senior class. I’m the coordinator of the Stanton dance team and I take Film Tech and Analysis with Lee Jihoon. And I take Advanced Physics One. With you .”
Wonwoo had to make a conscious effort not to breathe out a laugh, and settled for a smile hidden behind his mask. “Okay, Kwon Soonyoung . I’m Spiderman,” he turned and walked out toward the ledge before looking back over his shoulder, “but you already knew that.”
When Wonwoo makes it far enough that he knows Soonyoung can’t see him, he stops and turns to see him, vision hyperfocusing at the little figure on Soonyoung’s rooftop.
He’s still grinning.
◧
The next day, Wonwoo discovered it was much harder to act composed without a mask to hide behind.
“What do you think of Spiderman, Wonwoo?” Soonyoung’s sitting on a stool across from him at their lab station-- not doing any work, but Wonwoo’s used to that.
He holds his head in his hands, staring innocently at Wonwoo over their petri dishes, laid out for observation. He’s back to the scarf from yesterday’s class, but no one’s said anything about it yet.
“Oh. Uh-- I don’t know, he seems cool.” Wonwoo can’t look at him. If he looks at him right now he’ll crack for sure.
“Yeah?” Wonwoo can hear the smirk in his voice. “I think so too.”
Wonwoo thinks he might be done with the conversation already, but how could he be?
After a few seconds of silence filled by Soonyoung watching Wonwoo lift up cotton pads with tweezers and write meaningless bullshit about bacteria on their notes, he says, “I think I’m in love with him.”
In this instant, Wonwoo wishes for Spiderman. He wishes that he could go back into their classroom where his mask is in his backpack, and take it out and slip it on with the rest of the suit and pretend he was someone else. Wonwoo had a few inches on Soonyoung, but he always felt small sitting across from him at their lab bench, especially now .
But Wonwoo doesn’t flinch.
Before Jeonghan had graduated, he’d made sure he left Wonwoo with some understanding of schooling his emotions. For some reason, Jeonghan wanted everybody in the world to be a good liar-- well, he said ‘actor’, but Wonwoo knew what he meant.
Now Wonwoo just laughs, still not looking up, “Oh really? What makes you think that?”
Out of the corner of his eye he can see Soonyoung frown. “I just do.” He hesitates. “Did Jihoon tell you about what happened Friday night?”
Wonwoo glances up at Soonyoung curiously-- acting --, “No, why?”
Soonyoung looks sort of relieved all of the sudden, and Wonwoo thinks it’s strange that Soonyoung could be relieved that Wonwoo doesn't know about Spiderman saving him, if he thinks he is Spiderman.
But his heart reflexively tightens in his chest, because if their situations were reversed, he wouldn’t want anyone to know about what had happened either.
“Well, Spiderman helped me out on my way home.” Soonyoung flipped the switch back to smug and teasing. “That’s why I’m in love with him.”
“Good for you, Soonyoung. I hope you have lots of Spider-babies.”
Wonwoo smiles, still taking notes, when Soonyoung snorts a laugh.
◧
“I think I’m doing pretty good with it, actually. Soonyoung seemed like he was separating me and Spiderman in his head today.”
Jihoon rolled his eyes. “Well, thank god for that, because if you gave him any more reason to believe that you are who he thinks you are, I’d actually kill you.”
“But there’s no Spiderman stand-in. If you killed me, who would be there to take care of Soonyoung? I know you wouldn’t.”
“You’re damn-fucking-right I wouldn’t. You’d both die and then you’d be off my hands.”
“Yeah, then you’d just have Jun to keep you company, huh?”
Wonwoo grinned at the bright blush spreading across Jihoon’s cheeks.
“Like you have any business, telling me about my love life. Caught feelings for someone who knows you’re Spiderman, lately?”
Wonwoo’s grin twists into something more like a grimace. “I hate you.”
“You could never.”
◧
Wonwoo visits Soonyoung’s roof again, before and after patrolling for the night.
He isn’t there when Wonwoo stops by before the sun has finished going down, but he is there when he swings down after discreetly checking his phone to see that it’s 1:03 AM, from a nearby rooftop.
When he lands this time, Soonyoung is still awake.
He took off the scarf again and Wonwoo is displeased to see the bruises, looking even darker , he thinks bitterly, though he knows it’s just his bias for Soonyoung that makes him think so.
“Hey, Wonwoo.” Soonyoung sounds annoyingly sure of himself for having seemed like he was reconsidering earlier.
“Not Wonwoo, but hello Soonyoung.”
Very-much-Wonwoo Wonwoo crouches down in front of Soonyoung again and sits.
“You did good today in class. Maybe you really aren’t Wonwoo.”
Wonwoo can’t honestly tell if these little asides to the real Wonwoo-- the Physics class Wonwoo, whether he’s Spiderman or not-- aren’t just Soonyoung thinking aloud.
“I’m not.”
Soonyoung sneers at him. “I know how you feel about the idea, but please, I’m trying to decide for myself, and you aren’t helping.”
Wonwoo shrugs, but stays quiet.
“Well, I guess I could-- I’ll tell you about Wonwoo then, if you don’t mind hearing a little about what I think of you. And if you really aren’t Wonwoo, then you learn something new everyday, and it can’t hurt to listen-- unless-- did you finish the notes, Wonwoo?”
Wonwoo thinks that it's mighty lofty of Soonyoung to accuse him of being the one to slack off, but catches himself before he says so.
“I can listen, if you feel so compelled to talk about this ‘Wonwoo’ character.”
Soonyoung smirks, “Great. I’m sure you’ll love him.”
He shifts where he sits, propped up against the door again, and Wonwoo feels heavier when he winces, hands flying to his back, but he waves him off when Wonwoo reaches out to him.
“Okay,” he settles himself, “where to begin? There’s so much to discuss.”
Wonwoo doesn’t really think there is much to discuss, but is interested despite himself in what Soonyoung could possibly think is worth discussing about him.
“Well, I told you yesterday that you’re in my Physics class, but we’re not just in the class together, we’re lab partners. I only met you last year, but you’re best friends with one of my best friends, Jihoon, and I think it would be cool if we could all hang out sometimes, but you seem so private so I don’t push it.” Soonyoung’s already being so much more introspective than Wonwoo usually knows him for, and the pit of anxiety in his stomach is back, twisting with apprehension.
And at nothing really, all Soonyoung’s done is cut the crap, but it’s hard not to think about the bruises on his neck, or the way he winces if the door rubs his back, when he’s not cracking jokes or looking smug.
“You’re really nice to me-- which is why it’s weird that you’re so mean to me up here-- even though I don’t ever do my fair share of the work. You’re really smart too, which is good, because, again, I don’t do my fair share of the work.” Soonyoung isn’t too focused on anything as he looks around in the night air, but every time his eyes float to him, Wonwoo tenses up.
“You’re funny too, and sort of hot, if I’m being totally honest,” Wonwoo chokes on nothing, but Soonyoung isn’t looking at him yet, and he fights hard to keep from coughing. “I don’t really get why you’re not dating anyone, but I’m glad,” now he looks Wonwoo dead in the eyes, and Wonwoo is sure, sure , that he’s seeing through the mask, “because I think I’m in love with you.”
Soonyoung watches him, waiting for a reaction, and it’s so hard because Wonwoo really doesn’t want to give him one, but what can he do when Soonyoung’s staring at him like that, testing him to see if he’ll crack.
Wonwoo thinks he should say something, since he’s managed not to throw up yet, but he remembers Soonyoung making almost the exact same confession earlier, and now he knows he can’t go about it the same way, because then he’ll know, no matter what Wonwoo says.
“You’re in love with Wonwoo ?” He says it slow, because if he lets himself go any faster then he’ll trip over himself.
“Yeah, I’m in love with you .” Soonyoung’s eyes sharpen even more, and Wonwoo feels dazed.
In a perfect world, Soonyoung would honestly mean it, and Wonwoo could take off his mask and they could make out on the rooftop until dawn. But Soonyoung doesn’t mean it, and if Wonwoo takes off his mask now, it’ll all have been for nothing.
“You mean, you’re in love with Wonwoo.” He channels Jeonghan’s pathological lying spirit and eases himself into a different person. “I mean, you could be in love with me too-- I have been told I have nice eyes,” I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate myself , “but maybe you should stop practice-confessing to me, and go tell him yourself.”
“You know, it’s rude to reject people by pretending to be someone else. Maybe I’ll tell you again tomorrow, in front of the whole class, just to see your face when I do it.” Soonyoung had dropped the intense stare and was pouting now. Wonwoo really wished that they could be in that perfect world right about now.
“Well, if you really feel that way about him, I wouldn’t do it like that. He seems like the type that wouldn’t forgive for embarrassing the both of you like that.”
“I wouldn’t, you would hate me. You’d probably ask to switch lab partners and never speak to me again. Maybe I’ll do it though. Just to spite you.”
◧
Wonwoo thinks it’s a testimony to his acting skills, when Soonyoung comes in the next day and he manages not to even look up at him.
“Wonwoo,” Soonyoung starts, sitting down in the desk next to him, “I was just rejected twice by one boy.”
Good god, it’s not even Friday yet.
Wonwoo runs through one of those acting warmups Jeonghan taught him in his head and pretends to look amused. “Oh yeah? How does that happen?”
Soonyoung slumps, defeatedly in his chair and looks up at the ceiling. “It’s a very long and complicated story, and I don’t know who I’m telling it to anymore.”
Wonwoo mixes some appraisal in with the pretend amusement. He hums, like he’s at a loss.
Jeonghan would be proud.
Class starts and Soonyoung keeps looking at him. He won’t look back all the way, but he can see him out of the corner of his eye, dark hair bouncing a little every time he turns to Wonwoo.
They go back into the lab for ‘follow up observations’, sitting at their respective sides of the lab bench.
Wonwoo sets everything up, and to his credit, Soonyoung has his notebook too, scarcely written in as it is. He’s back to the scarf again, and Wonwoo’s almost relieved to not have to see the purple marks indubitably still smearing the sides of his neck.
He’s only human, so of course he’s thought about putting a few marks on Soonyoung’s neck himself, but after Friday, he can’t bring himself to think about it any more. Even if he’d still die to get a taste of Soonyoung’s lips.
“Hey, do you tutor?”
Wonwoo looks up at Soonyoung, and he’s already looking back. If this is another scheme, Wonwoo feels apprehensive again, and he has to do the thing where he talks slowly again. “Sometimes. Why?”
“I was just wondering if you’re available tonight for some one-on-one. That test is on Monday, and I don’t even really know what it’s on.” The trap is clear to Wonwoo now, but he’s already stepped into it.
“We don’t have to do it tonight of course, school night you know. But if you were up for it maybe you could come over tomorrow and stay over, if you want… it is just Saturday.” The way his voice pitches lower with the word ‘tomorrow’, and drops a bit more with ‘Saturday’, makes Wonwoo sort of forget where he is and what he’s doing.
To his amazement, Soonyoung takes the petri dish and tweezers from Wonwoo’s hands, frozen in mid air, and picks up the cotton pad, seeming unaware of Wonwoo’s mental state.
Wonwoo can’t say yes, but he wants to, more than anything in the world , he wants to. He can hardly process all the many reasons why he should not promise to sleep over at Soonyoung’s on Friday, and suddenly he feels like maybe it’s not such a bad idea really.
“Okay, sure. That sounds cool.”
Soonyoung grins from the other side of the cotton pad.
◧
“So, Wonwoo. What will you do tomorrow? Come over and then ask to go to bed early so you can change and meet me here again? Or are you about to give some bullshit on why you won’t be here? Or maybe you’ll cancel on me in Physics tomorrow.”
Wonwoo’s only just set down and Soonyoung’s already on high guard. Of course, Wonwoo is too, because he’s always that way around Soonyoung, but right now it’s especially important.
Wonwoo had been going over it in his head all day after their morning physics class. He asked Jihoon if he would pretend to be a family member with an emergency so he could leave their study session early, or if he could distract Soonyoung out of it all together. Jihoon was, of course, pissed that Wonwoo could get himself into such a situation to begin with, and refused to help him, even if it meant exposing Spiderman’s identity to Soonyoung.
So this is what he was going to do:
“Are you implying that Wonwoo is going to be coming over here tomorrow? Does that mean you confessed to him?”
“I already confessed to you , but yes, you’re coming over tomorrow.” Wonwoo had to give him credit where credit was due; it was amazing how committed to his story ( the truth ) he was.
“I won’t come over if you have company, and actually,” here we go , “I was planning on not stopping by for a while anyways.”
Soonyoung looked up at him, smiling slyly from where he was sitting, as usual, by the door to the stairs. Wonwoo stood over him, towering more than usual, and feeling a little more self conscious because of it.
“See, I knew you would try to get out of it one way or the other. What’s your excuse? Have another hopeless case to save across town at two in the morning? Or are you just sick of me?”
Wonwoo couldn’t really handle standing anymore, so he sat down, channeling Jeonghan again.
“Actually, I was just thinking I’ve probably indulged you enough in these little rooftop meetups. I don’t really have time to come here at the end of every night, especially if I’m coming from across town. And--” Wonwoo felt terrible about this part but it was at least partially true, even if he felt he could talk to Soonyoung on this rooftop forever-- “if you need someone to talk to, you should really see a trauma therapist.”
Soonyoung tensed, and Wonwoo could feel both of their focuses being drawn to the bruises, now blue and green, trailing down his neck. “I don’t mean to dump you off with some random psychiatrist, but I’m not trained for that sort of thing, and what you went through was real, Soonyoung. I’m just sorry I can’t be the one to talk it out with you.”
“I don’t really want to talk it out with anyone. Including you.” If Wonwoo hadn’t been wearing his mask, it would’ve been clear to anyone how, exactly, soft Wonwoo’s heart was for Soonyoung. But Soonyoung couldn’t even look at him, and Wonwoo felt his own throat tighten.
Wonwoo wanted to pull him into his arms, and call him baby, and comfort him until the world ended. He wanted to go back in time and make Jihoon take the subway home with Soonyoung, or tell Soonyoung to call a taxi instead of an uber, or just go back farther and erase the concept of uber forever. That felt like the only way he could make Soonyoung’s life right again.
Since he couldn’t do any of that, Wonwoo didn’t do anything.
“Hey,” Wonwoo couldn’t get his voice to go much farther than a whisper without feeling like he was going to turn into molten lava.
Soonyoung’s head was down, but his eyes flicked up belatedly.
“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll come back on Sunday night as long as you don’t go out by yourself again. Not for a while at least.”
Soonyoung nodded compliantly. Looking back down into his lap where he was playing with his fingers. “That’s fine. Maybe I’ll actually get some sleep then, instead of having to sit around all night waiting for you.”
Before Wonwoo left for the night, Soonyoung was back to teasing him, reminding him to pack an extra set of clothes for tomorrow night.
◧
Wonwoo felt anxious walking into Soonyoung’s apartment building for too many reasons to list. Top of list though, was definitely that, since Wonwoo was here, Spiderman was here too.
It wouldn’t be the first time he couldn’t make it to patrol, but in the morning he wouldn’t be able to make himself watch the news, because what if someone got shot because I wasn’t there?
That was the one part of Spiderman-angst that Jihoon actually helped him with. Jihoon empathized with the responsibility of the thing and was always willing to reassure him that it wasn’t his fault, and there was no guarantee that when Wonwoo was patrolling he could always be there.
You just had to come to a sort of acceptance with it, but it still set Wonwoo’s nerves on edge.
Another top contender was being in Soonyoung’s apartment . Spending the night in Soonyoung’s apartment . There was no way he could be around Soonyoung for more than an hour without making a fool of himself. That’s why it was so inconvenient when they had block period Physics.
An hour and a half left so many opportunities to embarrass himself. He could only imagine how he could fuck up in an entire afternoon, evening, and night.
Wonwoo breaks a cold sweat in his jacket at the thought of getting up in the morning and Soonyoung seeing his bedhead and smelling his morning breath.
“You can set your stuff in here. Want anything to eat?”
“Oh, no. I’m fine.”
“Okay, well I do want to eat something, and I feel like you’re going to follow me to the kitchen because you’re shy so let’s go.”
Wonwoo blushed, but did follow him. It is small, but Wonwoo feels disproportionately like he’s taking up too much space.
He feels overly large and clumsy, even if he hasn’t touched anything. His wrists feel a little numb and his legs feel tight. Maybe he should eat something.
He doesn’t even need to ask, because Soonyoung’s turned to face him again and he’s holding two granola bars and a huge bowl of pretzels.
Briefly, Wonwoo wonders if Soonyoung’s not just planning on eating it all, but when he catches him looking, Soonyoung says, “ I think that you think that you were trying not to inconvenience me, but you’re skinny so I feel like I need to feed you.”
Wonwoo smiles and Soonyoung rolls his eyes, corners of his mouth turned up just slightly.
It’s only when they get back to his room that Soonyoung seems to remember that he’s still wearing the scarf. Wonwoo can hear the gears in his head turning with the confrontation of it.
If he doesn’t take it off, it’ll be weird because they’re inside and about to eat. If he does… Wonwoo obviously doesn’t really need an explanation of the bruises, but as Soonyoung’s treatment of him as Wonwoo -Wonwoo and not Spiderman -Wonwoo doesn’t include acknowledging Spiderman as anything other than an unidentified vigilante, Wonwoo figures he might feel obligated to give him one.
He doesn’t know how to help him other than give him some time to figure it out, so he asks Soonyoung where the bathroom is.
When he comes back, Soonyoung’s taken off the scarf and his jacket but put on a sweatshirt, the hood just thick enough that when it sits on his shoulders you can’t really notice anything wrong.
Wonwoo of course doesn’t go out of his way to point out the bruises, even though he can still see them, and they eat Soonyoung’s food before taking out their Physics textbooks.
Soonyoung has a very hard time with Physics, which is truly shocking, because he’s maintained a B average the entire year so far. But it’s like Wonwoo’s explaining multi variable Calculus to a five year old, until Soonyoung just suddenly understands the concept, and they can move on.
They do practice problems for every lesson that’s on the test, then after three lessons Wonwoo quizzes him.
Once they get done with the practice problems, Soonyoung seems to have a firm grasp on each lesson, but by the time Wonwoo quizzes him, it’s like he’s completely forgotten, and Wonwoo has to reteach him the whole thing.
Wonwoo points out that maybe if Soonyoung studied more, his Physics knowledge would be less temporary.
Soonyoung says he doesn’t care about keeping it long term because he’s not taking Physics in college so why does it matter?
“But you still have to know this stuff for the exam.” Wonwoo’s sitting at Soonyoung’s little desk, practically unused because Soonyoung does homework in his bed, which is where he is now, splayed out and looking at the ceiling.
“Can’t I just cheat off of you?”
It takes a surprising and annoying amount of effort for Wonwoo to totally reject this idea from his head. A voice that sounds irritatingly like Jihoon’s whispers, whipped , in his head.
“No. If I was letting you do that, then I wouldn’t bother to help you study.”
Soonyoung turns on his side to look at Wonwoo. “That’s fair.”
Wonwoo makes himself hold eye contact, even though he’s getting a headache just from Soonyoung staring at him.
“Can we do something else?”
Wonwoo finally lets himself blink.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know; Physics is boring.”
Wonwoo restrains himself from rolling his eyes. You were the one who wanted to study. But really, he knows that at least fifty percent of the reason Soonyoung asked him over is just to see if his schedule conflicted with Spiderman’s.
“Well I can’t help you. If you want to do something else, you have to decide.”
Soonyoung looks at him again, appraisingly. “When did you get so short with me?”
Wonwoo blushes. Oops, I’m trying not to be like Spiderman.
“Whatever, just pick something.” I’m actually so stupid.
Soonyoung narrows his eyes at him, but swings his legs off the bed. “Fine.”
He finds a few movies on netflix, and when Wonwoo won’t decide between them, they watch all of them. Soonyoung pauses one of the movies at some point-- Wonwoo can’t remember the title because fifteen minutes ago Soonyoung kicked his feet up into Wonwoo’s lap from the other side of the couch and it’s just a little too domestic for his weak heart.
“I’m hungry.”
Wonwoo almost makes a comment about how they just ate, but instead he looks at his phone for the time. It’s already been five hours since they got there and it’s pitch black outside.
“Do you want pizza or something? My mom’s treat.”
What Wonwoo really wants is for Soonyoung to keep his feet in his lap, but he doesn’t say anything about it when he moves to get up .
“Sure.”
They order pizza and eat it.
Wonwoo’s trying hard not to be snarky, because apparently Soonyoung thinks it’s uncharacteristic of him, but it’s too hard when he keeps getting so comfortable with him. But Soonyoung doesn’t seem to be thinking about it so much anymore so Wonwoo just gives up.
Once they finish the movie, it’s only eleven at night, and Wonwoo isn’t sure, but he doesn’t think you’re really supposed to go to bed that early at a sleep-over, but Soonyoung’s saying he’s tired and Wonwoo’s helping him make a bed on the floor.
Wonwoo briefly regrets agreeing to stay the night. If they were going to be done this early, he could have just taken the subway home. Maybe even patrolled for a couple hours before turning in for the night. But he also doesn’t want to leave.
When they finish setting up an air mattress and sheets next to Soonyoung’s bed, Wonwoo assumes it’s meant for him and starts to pull back the covers, but Soonyoung stops him.
“No way. You’re not sleeping on the floor.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you’re my guest that’s why . You can take the bed, I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“I don’t need the bed, it’s your house, you should take it.”
“No, this isn’t up for discussion. You’ll take the bed. I’m trying to show you some hospitality, just do it.”
Soonyoung’s looking at Wonwoo expectantly and Wonwoo’s just staring.
Finally he says, “Fine.”
◧
Wonwoo feels disproportionately guilty after lying in Soonyoung’s bed , not even close to sleep, for the next two hours.
He’s found himself very much adjusted to a sleep schedule from two in the morning-- when he usually gets back from patrol-- to six-thirty, when he has to get up for school. On the weekends he sleeps till noon.
Even Jihoon tells him it’s unhealthy, but Wonwoo still can’t go to sleep before two.
He figures he’d have woken up anyways from Soonyoung’s constant tossing an turning on the air mattress. In the dim light from street lamps outside the window, Wonwoo can see that it's already deflated a substantial amount, but it still makes that terrible sound, combination of waving around foil, and shoes squeaking on tile floors.
It makes Wonwoo feel much worse about taking the bed.
At what he predicts to be around one-thirty am, he sees Soonyoung get up, not quietly, from the air mattress and leave the room.
Wonwoo figures he’s just woken up to go to the bathroom, but he doesn’t come back for another fifteen minutes and Wonwoo starts to get nervous. He gets up and checks his phone. It’s actually already two-thirty by now, and he suddenly feels tired just looking at the time, but he still gets up to go check on Soonyoung.
He thinks it’s probably not the kind of thing lab-partners-bordering-on-friends do for each other, but that pit of anxiety is tight in Wonwoo’s stomach, and he can’t tell if it’s just random anxiety or that sense of something else.
After a couple minutes of looking around the apartment, careful not to make enough noise to wake up Soonyoung’s parents, Wonwoo feels a little sick with worry-- and sleep deprivation, but that doesn’t matter. Soonyoung isn’t anywhere at all, but surely he couldn’t have left.
Suddenly, he thinks of what he told Soonyoung on Tuesday-- what Spiderman told him really.
Just go to the roof of your building.
It takes Wonwoo a while to find the staircase that leads up to the roof, but once he pushes on to the door leading out, it hits against something solid.
The something solid says, “ Ow , what the fuck?”
The door opens away from Wonwoo and Soonyoung’s looking in at him.
“Wonwoo, what the fuck?”
“S-sorry. I--” He catches himself before he says I forgot , because why would I know that he sits on the other side of the door when he goes up here? “I woke up and you weren’t there.” Soonyoung’s stare gets a little more scrutinizing. “And when I went to look for you I couldn’t find you, so I came up here…”
It sounds weak and Wonwoo knows it, but he can’t say, I thought you might be in trouble again because I get this feeling in my stomach when things are about to go wrong, and I know you come up here sometimes because I told you to come here, and I’m actually Spiderman, just like you thought.
“How did you know I would be up here?”
Wonwoo just wants to step out onto the roof, because he’s sweating a little bit in his jacket and the heat from the building at his back, but Soonyoung’s in his way and looking at him with narrowed eyes.
“Uh I just--” what the fuck am I supposed to say -- “I go up to my roof sometimes, and I thought you might do that too and I couldn’t find you anywhere else so…”
It’s not exactly a lie, because he does go on to his roof sometimes, but only because he’s Spiderman and he can’t just swing into his apartment through his bedroom window.
Soonyoung still looks skeptical, but he moves out of the doorway for Wonwoo to come out with him. Once Wonwoo steps out into the cold, he closes the door and sits back down against it. After a second of hesitation, Wonwoo sits next to him, feeling out of place because he’s always sitting in front of Soonyoung on this roof, not next to him.
Soonyoung had put a jacket over the sweatshirt he had been wearing, and it's almost impossible to see the bruises on his neck, but when Wonwoo glances at him he lifts up his hood like he wants to hide them even more, under the pretense of being cold.
“Sorry, did I wake you up?”
“Uh no, I just had to go to the bathroom and noticed you weren’t there.”
They sit in silence for a minute.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
Wonwoo looks over at him. He knew Soonyoung had been restless, but if Soonyoung hadn’t been sleeping, he had fooled Wonwoo.
“Oh yeah? I thought you said you were tired.”
Soonyoung pulls his coat tighter around himself.
“I’ve been tired for the last week, but it doesn’t mean I can sleep.”
He shifts to look at him more closely. Now that he says it, Wonwoo feels stupid for not seeing that his eyes are darker, puffy with exhaustion, just like they were the first night Wonwoo visited him on the roof, but worse.
He thinks he knows why, but he can’t say anything about that, so he has to say, “Are you okay? What’s up?”
Soonyoung hasn’t looked at him since they sat down, and doesn’t now. “I just… keep having nightmares.”
Wonwoo’s no stranger to the traumatic nightmares that sometimes come after a rough New York night, but he’d never tell Jihoon that that’s part of the reason he doesn’t sleep until he’s exhausted.
The familiarity doesn’t make it any easier to say, “About what?”
Soonyoung looks at him, quick and testing.
No, no, no, you just told him that you weren’t the one to talk about it with. How could you make him talk about it with you now? As if you don’t even know? Are you really about to make him explain himself to you just so you don’t have to tell him you’re Spiderman? Come on, what the fuck, don’t make him do this, he looks so scared, what are you going to do if he starts crying? What are you going to--
He brought it up. And he still needs someone to talk to.
“You know I told you Spiderman saved me last Friday?” He really does look so fragile, and Wonwoo shifts as subtly as he can so that their arms are pressed together, because it’s all he can do not to just put his arm wholly over his shoulders.
“Yeah.”
“Wonwoowhatdoyouthinkaboutrapists?”
Wonwoo has to take a second to play that back slower until he understands.
Soonyoung’s looking intently at a spot of iced over cement a few yards in front of them.
“They’re-- well, obviously-- they’re terrible people who deserve to rot in jail for life. If someone I knew turned out to be a rapist I would report them to the police-- if they hadn’t already been reported-- and if they got off with a slap on the wrist, I would never make contact with them again. No one deserves to experience that shit.”
Wonwoo can hardly keep his voice steady, because rapists are second only to bastards who get off on murdering innocent people in his vigilante-rule-book, but Soonyoung still looks so vulnerable, so he tries his best.
Soonyoung seems to get momentum from his answer and he starts to tell Wonwoo about Friday night.
Wonwoo struggles to keep his temper even, and hopefully, understanding, because what kind of bastard waits until their passenger is asleep to pull over and take advantage of them.
Soonyoung gets teary pretty quickly into the story, but doesn’t actually cry. He skips over the part where he asked Wonwoo/Spiderman if he was in fact Wonwoo, and gets to the part after he talked to his mom.
“When I went to bed, I couldn’t go to sleep. I just felt like, if I fell asleep again, someone was gonna come out and- and get me.” His voice is so shaky and Wonwoo feels choked up too.
“And the only reason I’m telling you is because I feel like I can trust you, but my judgement is pretty bad after not sleeping for so long. And honestly, I regretted asking you to stay the night so much after you said yes. I know you would never do anything like that, but there’s no way I could fall asleep in the same room as another guy right now.”
Wonwoo’s looking at him still, but Soonyoung’s looking at the distant patch of ice.
After a minute Wonwoo realizes he’s supposed to say something.
“That’s fine, I totally get it. You should never force yourself to do anything if it makes you uncomfortable. But thank you-- for telling me. I’m flattered that you trust me.” Wonwoo’s amazed at himself for being able to say so much without bursting into tears or something more dramatic, but he guesses he could do anything if Soonyoung needed it from him.
Soonyoung’s won’t look at him still when he starts to really cry, or when he takes his hand out of his pocket to take Wonwoo’s and Wonwoo figures he really would do anything and everything for him.
◧
Soonyoung asks Wonwoo if he wants coffee and he says sure.
Soonyoung’s a little surprised when he says he takes it black, but hands it to him anyways.
Wonwoo watches him put the strainer in the sink and then pull out a whole other selection of drink-ingredients. Before he questions him, he sees that the container Soonyoung pulled out says Hot Chocolate and doesn’t say anything.
That is, until Soonyoung pulls over a huge jar of powdered sugar and puts more sugar into his mug than hot chocolate mix. “What the fuck? Why not just drink the sugar at that point?”
Soonyoung turns around to frown at him. “My mom got this weird kind of hot chocolate at the store because she forgot which one I liked, but it’s really bitter and she says I have to use it before she buys another one so this is what I have to go through.”
He turns back to the mug and flips a bottle of honey into the mug. Wonwoo rolls his eyes.
“Just dump it out somewhere and say you finished it.”
Soonyoung turns back to him again looking scandalized. “That’s wasteful! Plus, don’t you know how long this will last me? I’d have to wait so long to tell her I’d finished it that I might as well actually use it.”
Wonwoo shrugs and Soonyoung frowns again.
“You wouldn’t understand Mr. Black Coffee .”
Wonwoo’s brother has a soccer game his mom told him he has to make it to by noon, so Wonwoo helps Soonyoung put away the air mattress that no one slept on and Soonyoung helps Wonwoo pack up his stuff.
Wonwoo goes to the bathroom before he leaves and Soonyoung finishes cramming his Physics textbook back into his already full bag for him.
When Wonwoo comes back Soonyoung’s grinning and it makes Wonwoo smile too, if a little apprehensively.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Soonyoung’s grin twists into a scowl, “Nothing. Can’t I just be happy? Does everything have to be sad and serious all the time?”
Wonwoo’s mind briefly snaps back to their conversation last night and he’s probably a little too quick when he says, “No, of course not.”
Wonwoo has a hard time holding back from kissing Soonyoung goodbye when he leaves.
◧
Wonwoo can’t really stop thinking about how much more comfortable Soonyoung seemed around him.
He’s way too eager to come back and he almost decides to just see if Soonyoung is on his roof the same night before he talks himself out of it.
When he does come back on Sunday, as promised, at an hour too late for either of them not to feel it Monday morning, Soonyoung is waiting for him.
“A little late aren’t you, Wonwoo?”
“Better late than never.” He almost stops there, but the sudden victorious look on Soonyoung’s face reminds him to say, “But tragically, still not Wonwoo.”
Soonyoung just narrows his eyes and grins. “Sure.”
“How’d your date with the real Wonwoo go?” Oh fuck , he’d better not be so cheeky, but he can’t remember how he acted around Soonyoung before yesterday.
Soonyoung raises his eyebrows, but is still smiling, sly and close lipped before he says, “Oh, spectacularly, wouldn’t you think? It wasn’t very hard to talk you out of studying and into Stardust.”
Is that what they had watched? What the fuck? No wonder he’d been out of it afterward.
“I’m glad it went well, maybe you’ll start spending more time with him and I can stop making these little visits.”
“I’d bet you’d love that wouldn’t you? I’m sure you’ve been thinking about how much you want to kiss me, but that mask is in the way and you can’t take it off, so you’ll have to settle for cozying up to me on Physics study dates. Is that your plan, Wonwoo?”
Wonwoo chokes a little bit before he regains composure.
“Your apparent understanding of my identity makes me sound like a real creep.”
Soonyoung laughs genuinely.
After a few more minutes of Wonwoo trying to make casual conversation without acting the same around Soonyoung as he might as Physics-class-Wonwoo, he decided it’s time to take his leave.
“I should be going now. When would you like me to come again?” He sounds incredibly at Soonyoung’s dispense, and he wishes he didn’t, but he truly is.
Soonyoung hums, thinking. “How about Friday? That should give me enough time.”
Wonwoo’s eyebrows draw together. “Enough time for what?”
Soonyoung smiles slyly. “Nothing, don’t worry about it.”
◧
But of course, Wonwoo can’t help but worry about it. Because if Soonyoung’s scheming again then what could that mean for him?
He hasn’t gotten proof of Spiderman’s identity yet but it seems too much to hope that he’ll quit cold turkey.
Wonwoo consults Jihoon, but Jihoon tells him that the more he complains about how Soonyoung might actually catch on, the more he wants to stab Wonwoo in an abandoned New York alley and leave him to bleed out. Wonwoo stops consulting Jihoon.
“What’d you get?”
Soonyoung’s looking over at him pouting.
“What’d you get?”
He clutches the packet to his chest. “I asked you first.”
“And I asked you second.”
Soonyoung frowns.
Wonwoo grins.
“I’ll tell you what I got if you tell me your score first.”
“That’s bullying, Wonwoo, you obviously did better than me. Just tell me your score. I don’t want to tell you mine, it’s embarrassing.”
“Come on, it’s only fair. And I helped you study, so surely it can’t be that bad.”
The look Soonyoung gives him indicates that, yes, yes it can be that bad.
Wonwoo’s ultimately endeared but he rolls his eyes anyways. “Fine, I’ll show you mine, but you have to promise you’ll show me yours after. Okay?”
Soonyoung’s face twists into a grimace.
“What? It’s only fair.”
“No-- it’s just…” Soonyoung’s nose is all scrunched up and it’s doing things to Wonwoo’s weak weak heart. “You’re totally making it sound like we’re talking about our dicks or something.”
Wonwoo’s own face pulls into something surprised and confused before he laughs. He gives in, handing his test paper to Soonyoung.
Soonyoung’s face straightens out into a pout again. “See, I knew it. This isn’t fair, now you’re just rubbing it in my face.”
Wonwoo smiles but Soonyoung’s not looking at him. “You asked to see it. Besides, it’s not like I got a perfect score or anything. Let me see yours.”
Soonyoung huffs, but hands his own test packet to Wonwoo.
23/30. “That’s not bad at all. What is that? A C?”
Soonyoung’s frown deepens. “Yeah, it’s a C . It brought my test average down.”
Wonwoo raises his eyebrows, surprised. “Really?”
“Yes, ‘ really .’ ” Soonyoung punches him in the arm, and Wonwoo pretends it hurts for Soonyoung’s pride. “You act like I’m stupid.”
Wonwoo raises his eyebrows again.
Soonyoung huffs. “I don’t like what you’re implying.”
“Well, I guess that study session was all for nothing. How did you do worse when you actually studied?”
Soonyoung narrows his eyes like he knows exactly why he did worse, but then slumps onto his desk. “I don’t knooooow .”
Wonwoo pats him on the back, because at this point he can’t resist it anymore.
“You’ll have to practice your tutoring skills, Wonwoo, because I’m not letting you get away with this.”
Wonwoo lets himself smile--because Soonyoung has his face down on the desk-- fondly.
And he doesn’t think of Spiderman for the rest of class.
◧
“Then you should say this.”
“Are you kidding? I can’t say that, then he’ll--”
“What are you doing?” Jihoon grabs for the paper between Soonyoung and Junhui on the desk, but Junhui swipes it off the desk and behind his back in a second.
“Nothing.” They say at the same time.
“No, seriously, what is that?” He reaches around Jun to try to grab whatever it is he has out of his hands, but Jun stands up and takes a step back.
“Nothing, Jihoon.” So maybe, Jihoon blushes a little when Jun says his name like that, it’s none of your business.
Jihoon steps up to him and tries to reach around him to see what he has, but he-- very childishly, Jihoon’s opinion-- lifts the paper up and over their heads. From where Soonyoung is sitting, he whistles and mutters, “Low blow, Wen Junhui.”
Jihoon gives him a look, because shut the hell up, Kwon Soonyoung, you’re embarrassing me , before turning back to look up at the paper held high over his head. He glances from the paper, unreadable, mysterious-- probably dangerous, if Soonyoung’s involved.
Obviously, he’s not going to try and climb this boy, so, “Wonwoo! Get your tree ass over here!”
Wonwoo turns his head from across the room. He and Jihoon have a brief staring match where much is communicated but nothing is said.
Why?
You know why.
It’s not my fault you’re short.
Jeon Wonwoo, if you don’t move your ten foot tall stick bug body over here right now --
Wonwoo gets up, making sure to sigh like it bothers him very much to do so, and comes over.
“What do you need help reaching now?”
Jihoon flushes and flicks Wonwoo in the forehead, because he’s an idiot.
“Is that why you hang out with Wonwoo? Because you need someone tall around when Jun’s not with you?”
Jihoon flicks Soonyoung in the forehead too, because they’re both idiots.
“Hey, he hangs out with me because he likes hanging out with me.” Wonwoo takes a pair of sunglasses-- why does he even have those -- from where they’re hung on his shirt and puts them on, assuming a pose reminiscent of when they were in ninth grade and Soonyoung broke both of his arms in one go. Jihoon honestly can’t tell what he’s looking at. “I’m cool, I’m hip, I’m fresh. I know how to party.”
Soonyoung laughs and Jihoon decides it must be some kind of strange mating ritual.
He’s about to make fun of them both for it when he catches Jun’s eye. He looks like he was trying hard not to look at Jihoon, and when they make eye contact he blushes. Jihoon hardly sees him crumbling something up behind his back and stuffing it in his back pocket.
“Hey, what--”
“It doesn’t matter, I’ll tell you later if you want. Just, ignore it right now.”
Soonyoung and Wonwoo are still in the middle of their mating ritual and Jun’s looking at him like he’s serious, so Jihoon lets it go.
◧
“Fancy seeing you here.”
“It’s my roof, dummy.”
“Still, always a surprise.”
Soonyoung propped up against the door just like always, and Wonwoo feels the ease of routine when he squats and sits down in front of him.
“I should be the one who’s surprised. I keep thinking one of these nights you’ll realise you have something better to do.”
Wonwoo briefly thinks, there’s nothing I’d rather be doing , but he does not think of saying that. “Hey, you asked me to come, and I’m here aren’t I?” Smooth as glass, Wonwoo.
“Well, excuse me for having abandonment issues, when you can’t even sit close enough to have a normal conversation with me. Would you like me to keep straining my voice so that you can feel flighty? Or would you mind coming within speaking distance once in a while?”
Wonwoo huffs and shuffles closer, moving to lean on the doorway to the stairs, just like he had when he’d stayed the night.
He thinks it’s a little odd of Soonyoung, but doesn’t think much else, at least, not until he realizes that throughout the whole conversation, Soonyoung hasn’t called him Wonwoo once.
The forefront of his mind starts playing that song, Celebration , and flashing a strobe light because he’s given up ? But that little knot of apprehension in his stomach is back again.
“So…” Soonyoung looks at him out of the corner of his eye, and Wonwoo’s anxiety rope™ tightens. “Saved any college students from car hook ups lately?”
Wonwoo’s anxiety rope shrinks and collapses like a burnt out candle wick. Why was it that the news only focused on the least successful of Wonwoo’s heroic endeavors?
“It was an accident ! I thought one of them was being murdered! Excuse me for having good intentions.”
Soonyoung laughs and Wonwoo forgets the anxiety rope™.
“But you can’t just…” Soonyoung trails off, his eye catching something behind Wonwoo.
Wonwoo looks over his shoulder, sees nothing, starts to turn back. “What is--”
Suddenly, he feels the slide of tough and tight fabric up and off of his face, clinging to his hair before the sensation is totally gone.
Now, Wonwoo’s had many a dream about potential unmasking scenarios.
Sometimes, they’re good dreams. Sometimes he takes off the mask from a podium, in front of a crowd, and they cheer, ask for his name, and an interview. There are designated writers for Spiderman columns already, but Wonwoo has always wanted to write, and he figures an autobiography of the life of Spiderman-- unmasked-- would make a good story.
After the first night he visited Soonyoung as Spiderman on the rooftop, he even had a dream of taking off his mask for him. In his dreamscape, Soonyoung had been delighted and impressed with Wonwoo, and of course, it wasn’t just a good dream, it was a great dream, and Wonwoo was really just lucky he didn’t have to go to school in the morning.
But mostly, all of his unmasking dreams were nightmares.
Being ambushed by more thugs than he could handle, and being beaten within an inch of his life, only, instead of death, they would reveal his identity to the world, and he would be plagued by the permanent humiliation.
Being forced to unmask as a ransom for hostages.
Being knocked unconscious and unmasked unknowingly and unwillingly by some stranger that deserved to be behind bars.
Being accidentally unmasked in a fight, and having to bargain for the promise that his identity wouldn’t be revealed.
Being killed, and having his head sent, with the mask, to his family’s doorstep.
So naturally, he felt more than a little panicked and exposed when Soonyoung tugged off his mask.
He instinctively ducks and covers his head, cursing already, maybe out loud or just in his head, he didn’t really know.
After getting over the initial panic, he stills.
“I fucking knew it.”
He resists the urge to take his head out from between his knees to look at Soonyoung.
“I fucking knew it. You fucking lying bastard .”
Wonwoo gives up.
When he finally raises his head-- very nervously-- Soonyoung’s looking at him with a fire in his eyes that Wonwoo had never seen. But he’s also grinning.
“You stupid, lying bastard. I knew it. I fucking knew it. You stupid dumbass. I can’t believe I finally got you for real. No more denying it, huh, Jeon Wonwoo?”
He can't even bring himself to care anymore. “Fuck you, Soonyoung. Give me that shit back, anyone could be looking out their window. You can yell at me after.”
Still grinning broadly, Soonyoung hands back the mask-- Spiderman .
Wonwoo tugs the mask back down over his face, but the heat of it didn’t help the deep red flush of mortification on his face settle.
“Ah, Wonwoo, I can’t believe you let your guard down like that. No wonder they don’t call you in when the Avengers are going anywhere.”
Wonwoo slumps, defeated, against the door, not saying anything.
Soonyoung just stares at him, mask and all, for a solid minute.
“Come inside and get changed, Wonwoo.”
Wonwoo groans, confused and upset, because I really wasn’t expecting this tonight .
“What are you talking about? It’s already two, I have to go.”
“No way! You can’t leave. Just because you’re embarrassed doesn’t mean you get to walk away from this like I don’t totally deserve to have a conversation with you about it.”
Soonyoung’s doing that terrible thing where he’s cut the crap again, and it's making Wonwoo feel small, which is not fair, because he never feels small when he’s Spiderman.
“But do we have to have that conversation now ?”
Soonyoung frowns, deeply, and Wonwoo feels his cheeks get hotter.
“Jeon Wonwoo, we are having this conversation tonight , face to fucking face , so you can either take off your mask now, out here, or we can go down and you can change into another set of clothes and we can a have a normal conversation, like you’re not an actual baby. God, I thought you were supposed to be the mature one.”
Wonwoo mutters, so did I , but when Soonyoung reaches over to smack his arm, he acquiesces and they go down into Soonyoung’s apartment.
◧
“Oh no, it’s Wonwoo. Here I thought, I’d invited Spiderman into my apartment, not you. Where did Spiderman go? Did you see him leave?”
Wonwoo glares at Soonyoung as he comes out of the bathroom, freshly changed into one of Soonyoung’s most oversized t-shirts-- which fits mostly normally on Wonwoo-- and a pair of sweatpants. He’s not sure how well he’s managing the glare, because he’s trying so hard not to blush at the sheer weight of the fact that he’s wearing Soonyoung’s clothes.
“You’re mean.”
Soonyoung raises his eyebrows, grinning. “I’m mean? You’re the one who refused to admit you were who I said you were the whole time. No holding back on the attitude the whole time too”
If Wonwoo weren’t so miserable because Jihoon’s actually going to kill me now , he might’ve been able to enjoy the familiarity of being with Soonyoung, not just as Spiderman, or just as Physics Wonwoo, but as both.
“I still can’t believe you just took it right off ,” he changes the subject, because he really can’t believe it, even as he holds the mask in his hands. “How were you even sure? You seemed like you were reconsidering after I stayed the night.”
Soonyoung’s grin becomes no less broad. “Silly Spiderman. You should learn to put your little outfit somewhere other than your backpack, if you’re going to let me pack it up for you.”
Wonwoo groans loudly, remembering Soonyoung’s smile-- not unlike the one he had on now-- after he had finished packing Wonwoo’s bag.
“Why didn’t you just say something then? So I could be home by now, asleep.”
Soonyoung doesn’t look like he pities Wonwoo’s predicament at all when he says. “It was too fun to string you along.”
Wonwoo can’t help but blush now, but he doesn’t have time to do anything else before Soonyoung continues. “While we’re on the topic of forcing you to admit things I already know…”
Wonwoo groans, even louder, because what else could he know?
“Wonwoo,” he pauses to give him his most smug look, “do you have a crush on me?”
Wonwoo actually thinks he might die. After all the life threatening situations he’s put himself in, this is definitely the worst and most fatal.
He just splutters for a minute, because he’s an inarticulate mess, if only for Soonyoung, before managing. “What-- no! Stupid-- how--”
Soonyoung crosses the room, grin still fixed on his face. “Come on, Spiderman, when are you gonna stop lying to me?” And he kisses Wonwoo.
It’s a terribly hot and uncomfortable feeling that spreads from his chest up to his scalp and across his ears and the tips or his hair when he only just registers what Soonyoung’s doing.
Of course, he had long since gotten used to the idea of wanting to kiss Soonyoung, when he was around, and he did like it, but he was very flustered by the suddenness of it.
Quickly enough, he remembered just how many times he had wished for it, and then all the itchy heat of his initial spook got pushed into his lips by the plain joy that was bubbling up in his bloodstream.
It was hard to know what, exactly, was going on, Wonwoo was enjoying it too much, and before he had really gotten a grasp on his physicality, Soonyoung was pulling away.
You could have told Wonwoo that any number of seconds, minutes, or hours had passed by and he would’ve believed you no matter what. He would not have known for sure how much time had passed, had someone held up a stopwatch beside him and pressed go when Soonyoung had started kissing him, and stopped when they had parted. He didn’t really care, either.
“You kiss like one of those crash test dummies that they use to test safety features of new cars.” There was obviously no malintent in this, as Soonyoung was still grinning very broadly.
“You know, I don’t actually care.” The itchy heat had returned after they had parted, though Wonwoo was very comfortable in it now, but he still felt a bit breathless.
Soonyoung pretended to act like he cared very much, and spent the rest of the night-- or morning-- teaching him how to be more, for lack of a better word, lively .
◧
“How did you know I had a crush on you then?”
“Jun told me.”
Wonwoo turned to look at Soonyoung. They had fallen asleep in his bed, having done no more than kiss until the sun had nearly started to come up.
“Well how would he know?
Soonyoung was looking at the ceiling, and gave it his most impressive look. “He says Jihoon talks in his sleep.”
Wonwoo’s reaction to the news that came from this implication was much more astounding-- and much more annoying, to Jihoon, when he called him to yell about it-- than it had been to the revelation of his civilian identity or the forced confession.
However, Jihoon very much put him in his place once Wonwoo had gotten the whole story out-- after of course he had dramatically accused Jihoon of breaking friend code, by not telling him he was sleeping with Wen Junhui. Jihoon, no less dramatically, yelled at Wonwoo for letting himself be found out in more ways than one, and that settled Wonwoo right down.
Jihoon hung up on him, Wonwoo feeling much less excited about everything now, but Soonyoung kissed him better.