Ethan Cain woke up feeling like a twelve-car pile-up with tax season on top. Every inch of him ached, and his limbs moved with the enthusiasm of overcooked spaghetti.
He lay there for a few moments, blinking at the ceiling, cataloguing the damage.
Ribs: bruised. Arms: jelly. Legs: maybe gone forever. Brain: foggy, fried, and full of static.
He groaned like a haunted house floorboard and rolled out of bed with the grace of a sack of bricks. A very heroic, self-sacrificing sack of bricks, sure, but a sack nonetheless.
No good deed went unpunished, after all, just ask future spidey.
Ethan did it once, and he was already pretty fed up with this whole 'moral compass' thing.
The events of the previous day played through his head in flashes; green rage monster, bone-white horror with rage issues, kids crying, grown men rightfully shitting themselves, debris falling, grenades flying (this one mostly because of him), and him in the middle of it with a delightfully useless set of tactical armor and mask and a mouthful of swear words.
Fun time.
But it was over now. He didn't have to go to school. His parents, equal parts proud and worried that their son helped rescue people from under the rubble and guide morons and shell-shocked victims alike toward safety, had told him to rest.
His mother insisted that the mandatory ass-whooping was only postponed, not cancelled.
Few people could understand, but a delayed beating was the stuff of legend, most people get those ahead of time.
This wasn't even the craziest thing.
Captain George Stacy had shown up last night, glaring, jaw clenched, hands in fists, and thanked him for making sure Gwen got to safety.
It was the kind of thank-you that came with lifetime trauma and a vague implication of death by shotgun if he got her hurt…and maybe even if he didn't.
So, no school. No responsibilities. No training. Just couch, cartoons, and chocolate cereal so wonderfully unhealthy they might as well inject pure sugar into his veins and be done with it.
The dream.
He shuffled into the kitchen in his favorite, least flattering pajamas; plaid pants and an old Midtown t-shirt, and poured himself a bowl of chocolate sugar bombs. Two scoops of fake marshmallows later, he dragged his aching body to the couch, turned on the TV, and started flipping channels.
News. Boring. Commercial. Boring. Cartoon—
"...and in breaking coverage of the Harlem Incident, we've obtained new footage from a daring civilian on site who managed to film and only suffer from temporary paralysis..."
Ethan's thumb froze mid-click.
The TV showed shaky, pixelated video. Two behemoths collided like titans in the ruins of a street Ethan had helped evacuate.
But that wasn't the part that made his stomach drop.
No, the part that made him choke on his cereal was the tiny figure darting around in the background, dark gear, tactical but non-descript, pulling debris off people, flinging chunks of concrete, hurling something into Abomination's mouth like a quarterback with a grenade.
Wouldn't be so crazy if he wasn't doing this without touching them, as if he could move things with his mind…
"Oh no," Ethan muttered, mouth full of chocolate and dread. "No no no no—"
It wasn't clear.
The footage was grainy, and he'd been smart about covering his face and minimizing his profile. But it was enough.
Enough for someone observant. Someone smart. Someone who had been there. Someone who was absurdly pretty and even more adorable somehow. Someone who knew how tall he was, how he moved.
His phone buzzed on the coffee table.
Gwen: We have to talk.
Ethan stared at it like it had personally offended him.
That was not a good text.
That was never a good text.
That was a text that meant the universe had decided to throw him into the meat grinder again. He had maybe five minutes to pull himself together and craft a game plan before the Gwen-pocalypse arrived.
He grabbed his phone to call her, try and reschedule the impending doom, maybe push it to never if he could bullshit things just right, and swung open the front door, ready to pace and panic.
She was already there. Hand raised, finger about to press the doorbell.
They both froze.
Gwen Stacy, looking effortlessly photogenic in jeans and a ponytail, stared at him. Not angry. Not smiling either. Just...waiting, full-poker face.
And Ethan; sleep-deprived, sore, brain operating on cartoon logic and cereal sugar, blurted the first thing that came to mind.
"You're really pretty when you're about to interrogate me." He had to suffer his own corny line, discovering it along with everyone else, but honestly he barely regretted it.
She was pretty, though he could do without the interrogation part.
Especially now that her cheeks turned the softest pink, and eyes narrowed in what would certainly be rather intimidating to someone else, but he really just found it even cuter somehow.
"Don't think that line's getting you off the hook, Cain." She said accusingly, finger pointed at his chest and he considered whether he should just forsake what's left of his composure and hug the hell out of her.
His logical side won out, unfortunately.
"Last name? Now that's just cruel, Gwenneth,"He stepped aside when she tried to pinch him for using the forbidden nickname, "Come in. Might as well hear the sentencing in my own home."
She walked in like she belonged there. It was the first time either of them had been in the other's house. Ethan's place was small but cozy, solid middle-class furnishings, family photos on the mantle and everywhere else, a smell that said someone's mamma cooked real meals here.
It wasn't much, but it was his home.
And she was in it.
They were both here, in his home, alone.
…Better stop thinking about that.
Gwen's eyes scanned the room, lingering on details.
"Wow," she said, pausing by a shelf. "You've got... a lot of trophies."
"Yeah, well. My parents couldn't afford therapy so they signed me up for everything. Martial arts, swimming, coding camp. Turns out, I'm aggressively average at many things." He said easily, which was technically true given the amount of geniuses and broken characters in this world.
"Your version of average is annoying." She smiled, and it was enough to make him feel better.
They sat in the living room. Him on the couch, her in the armchair. He offered her a drink. She declined. They danced around the elephant in the room like it wasn't stomping on the furniture.
The TV was still playing. He flipped the channel.
Cartoons.
She blinked. "Really?"
"I met a kaiju yesterday," he said, deadpan. "I get cartoons today."
"Okay, fair."
Silence stretched again, but it wasn't heavy. It was laced with curiosity. With almosts. She was looking around again. Letting the moment breathe, and he sure wasn't gonna complain, it gave him some crucial seconds to weave his web of bullshit.
Her eyes landed on a framed photo near the hallway.
It was a younger Ethan in all of his glory. A pretty, brown-haired girl in her late teens had her arms around him, beaming with a little too much closeness.
Gwen stared at it.
Ethan stared at her, staring at it.
He could feel the fuckery to come, and wanted no part of it.
"Nope," He said
"I didn't say anything," She spoke, her eyes not leaving the picture.
"You were going to,"
"Well…you do look happy there," She drawled.
"I was seven, that was my babysitter." He went to kill the issue before it could arise, but anyone in a similar situation could tell you logic had no place.
"I can see that," She raised an eyebrow. "But you do look really happy with the arrangement."
He was, but she didn't need to know that.
He threw a couch pillow at her. "I had a juice box in the other hand. My standards were low."
She laughed. He cracked a smile.
Crisis averted.
The moment stretched again.
They both knew the talk was coming. But for now, for just a little longer, they let it wait.
Author's Note:
If you're enjoying the story and want to read ahead or support my work, you can check out my P@treon at [email protected]/LordCampione. But don't worry—all chapters will eventually be public. Just being here and reading means the world to me. Thank you for your time and support.