Chapter Text
Martin was already late to Keonho's. He was supposed to be there at nine and it was already getting close to midnight. In his defense, it wasn't his fault at the slightest. It wasn't his fault a guy tried to rob an old lady's café— which also happened his favorite place to go because it was quiet, warm and familiar, also really close to his home — and it wasn't his fault that just after he finished webbing the guy to a wall near the café, another son of a dickhead tried to get in a hotel with explosives. It wasn't his fault and probably Keonho had already guessed it and found an excuse for him—but he had promised them, and actually wanted to watch the goddamn movie for one fucking time. They were going to watch The Silence of the Lambs because Seonghyon hadn't watched it yet. Keonho, Seonghyeon and him, when was the last time all of them, all three hanged out without Martin being late or not being there at all? And after all of that happened, he went home to change and how lucky, he wasted twenty more minutes arguing with his aunt and it hurted way more than the kick he got to his balls, twice.
Anyway, not the time for it.
He swung between buildings with more aggression than was probably necessary, jaw tight under the mask, replaying the fight with his aunt in his head for the fourth time in twenty minutes. The cold air bit at him even through the suit and he welcomed it, honestly. Something to think about other than the look on Hyuna's face. You came home bleeding again, Martin. You can't even stand still, Martin. You came home bleeding and you won't tell me anything. He exhaled, hard.
Martin never used to fight with his aunt. Not really. When he was a kid there'd been the occasional argument about turning his music down or going to sleep at a reasonable hour— she'd knock on his door and he'd groan and turn Anti-flag down approximately four percent and they'd both call it a compromise. That was it. That was the extent of it. Hyuna had always been less like a guardian and more like the coolest person he knew, the one who let him stay up too late watching horror movies, the one who taught everything he knew about music and just everything, she didn't freak out when he was detained for graffiting the school wall, didn't freak out when he came home at fifteen with his eyebrow pierced. Just don't tell me how much it cost and disinfect it. she'd said, and that was that. But the last two years had been something else entirely. He couldn't tell her. That was the thing. He couldn't sit down across from her at the kitchen table and say yeah, actually, Auntie, about the bruises— funny story, I got bitten by a radioactive spider while drawing Fidel and Che on the wall behind school with Ryul and now I'm a vigilante, so. He'd run the conversation in his head approximately eight hundred times and it never went well. So instead he lied, and she worried, and lately the worry had started coming out as anger, which he understood, he genuinely understood, but it didn't make it hurt less. Okay, he thought, reaching for the familiar mental reset—Which was his friends. Not now. Process later. Think later. Right now focus on Hannibal Lecter—
His spider sense spiked. A sharp headache and a dinggg!–not exactly, but close– sound, the low buzz of background city noise his brain had learned to filter out. It was sharp, directional and insistent in a way that made him change course before he'd consciously decided to, swinging left off his planned trajectory. Left. Okay. Left it is. Fuck Hannibal anyway, filthy cannibal fuck!
He followed it across three blocks, scanning as he moved, and then he saw the rooftop and he saw the figure standing at its edge and his brain went completely, utterly white. Fuck, no, no no no. He moved. Later he wouldn't be able to reconstruct exactly how he crossed the distance so fast, his body just went, web catching the ledge, momentum swinging him low and hard, and he grabbed the figure around the waist and pulled, and for a few horrible seconds they were both in the air with nothing below them but the city. They landed hard on a quiet side street two buildings over. Martin set him down. Stepped back, breathed. Then the person looked up at him and Martin's heart stopped completely.
Oh, his brain said quietly. Oh fuck, that's Juhoon.
Juhoon, who he'd known since he was five years old. Juhoon, who used to know about Martin more than Martin did of himself. Juhoon, who had looked straight through him in a school hallway two days ago like Martin was made of air, like they hadn't once known every single thing about each other. His eyes were red and swollen. His cheeks were wet. He was staring at Martin— at Spider-Man — with this blank, shock-hollowed expression, like he hadn't fully arrived back in his body yet. He hadn't.
He was going to— Martin's thoughts stuttered. Fuck, he was actually going to— He hadn't known. That was the part currently detonating quietly in the back of his skull. He'd seen Juhoon in the halls, had catalogued every tiny change in him over four years with the obsessive attention of someone who absolutely refused to admit they were still in love with their ex-best friend— the new wariness in his posture, the bandage he'd spotted once on his left wrist that Martin had spent three weeks trying not to think about, and he'd still managed to not know. To not see it. You were so busy being angry, some part of him said. You were so busy trying to hate him. He hadn't even managed that, if he was being honest.
Then Juhoon's face crumpled, and the thoughts shut up so fast, his mouth hanged open to say something but then he hit Martin, both fists against his chest and arm, shaking, and Martin stood there and took it because Juhoon could hit him with a whole car and he'd probably be fine, and more importantly because he could hear the sound underneath the hitting, this small broken thing, and it was doing something genuinely devastating to his chest. "You shouldn't have done that." Juhoon's voice came out destroyed. "You don't save someone who— who's jumping willingly. That's not how it works. You should know that, you're a super-fucking-hero, You should know that—" Then he sobbed. He sobbed and Martin, Martin wanted to to bang his own head against the walls and die. Say something, Martin thought desperately at himself. You literally talk to criminals everyday, Martin Edwards, say something now.
"You don't have to be saved willingly," he said. His voice came out lower than usual, careful to not say anything remotely triggering. "That's the whole thing about saving people." Juhoon laughed. And it was the worst sound Martin had ever heard in his life and he had once been shot, heard the sound of the bullet ripping his skin. "First my mom," Juhoon said, and his voice cracked on it. "Then James. Now you. Everyone just— keeps stopping me." Martin didn't move. Something about those words— first my mom, then James — landed in his brain like a heavy weight, like pieces of something he hadn't known he was missing.
So that's what James knew. That's why James had looked like he was about to cry that day in the hallway when Martin had asked what was going on with Juhoon. That's what had been happening, all this time, while Martin was on the other side of the school being angry about something he'd never even understood. Juhoon's legs buckled slightly and Martin caught him on instinct, arms around him, and then Juhoon just... stayed there. Why would he stay there? Forehead against Martin's chest, fingers gripping the front of the suit, shaking, crying in a way that Martin was sure was going to steal hours from his sleep. Martin held him and stared at the city and tried to keep his breathing even, and thought. I have been so, so stupid. I have been so profoundly, genuinely stupid. He thought about the years he'd spent carefully constructing anger like a wall and all the things that had been happening on the other side of it that he hadn't seen. He thought about being five years old and Juhoon punching their classmate that made fun of Martin, talking him for the first time and knowing with complete certainty that this was his person, the one who will get it, who will get him, and he thought about Juhoon being his everything for eight years and then he thought about four years of silence and looking through each other in hallways, then suddenly being his nothing, his no one. The city hummed below them. The cold pressed in from every side but it wasn't the reason Martin was shivering.
Eventually the shaking slowed. Juhoon pulled back, dragging his sleeve across his face, and let out this short, embarrassed exhale. "Sorry. I just — I put snot on Spider-Man's suit. Dude, that's mortifying." And murmured a 'fucking pathetic...' under his breath.
"It's okay." Martin managed to keep his voice steady, surprisingly. "Genuinely. You can put snot on my suit. I don't mind, at all. Happens all the time, totally." Something shifted in Juhoon's expression, he looked at Martin for a moment, searching, and then he huffed out the ghost of a laugh. Martin filed it away. He was going to think about that laugh later in a way that was probably unhealthy.
"You got someone who can come get you?" he asked. Was this what he was supposed to say? Or was he being offensive? What to say to someone who just tried to kill themselves?
Juhoon shook his head. "I don't want to... you know, scare anyone."
"Okay." Martin nodded. Okay, fuck. "Then I'll take you home. Make sure you get there safe."
"You don't have to—"
"I know I don't have to." He shrugged like his whole nervous system and every part of his brain that worked for thinking wasn't currently on fire. "I want to." Fucking hopeless.
He cleared his throath. "Spider-Man policies." He added and hoped he didn't sound like he was a brainless idiot. Juhoon looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked away, back at the city, arms wrapping around himself against the cold. Martin stood very still and had the quietest, most private breakdown of his life. Four years.
Because here was the thing. Here was the thing that his brain had just presented to him with absolutely zero warning; he had, for almost two years, swung around this city helping strangers. Stopping muggings, talking people down, showing up when his spider sense said this way and going that way without any question. He'd built something here, even if no one knew it was him. He'd made himself useful in a way that Martin-just-Martin, without the suit, had never quite figured out how to be. And if he couldn't talk to Juhoon as himself —and he couldn't, four years of evidence confirmed that he couldn't.— there was nothing stopping him from doing it like this.
This is an absolutely terrible idea, he thought clearly. I am a terrible person, a shame to humankind—
Then Juhoon murmured a street and a neighbourhood name and he snapped back into the real world.
He looked at Juhoon. At the red around his eyes, the way he was holding himself like he was trying to take up less space. The worst idea you've ever had Martin, and you are one of a bad idea machine, he confirmed to himself.
"Ready?" he said out loud. Juhoon looked at him and almost, barely, nodded. Martin was so completely down bad for the boy it was actually embarrassing.
☥
He took Juhoon home the long way. Not because he needed to — the suit had GPS just in case, and he knew these streets better than he knew his own handwriting. — but because the cold air was helping him think, or at least helping him not think, which was close enough and the same thing in a way. Juhoon sat tucked against him, his arms wrapped around Martin's neck in the way that was just structurally necessary for web-swinging and said nothing, and Martin said nothing, and the city moved below them in streaks of light. He set him down outside his building. He had asked Juhoon to give directions to him again –even though he already said a street name Martin sometimes needed to play dumb.– like he couldn't find Juhoon's home by just walking if he woke up in Cuba some monday morning randomly.
He stepped back, checked that his feet were firmly on the ground. "You're gonna be okay getting up?" he asked. Juhoon nodded. He looked tired in a bone deep way that Martin recognised and hated recognising. He was pulling his sleeves down over his hands, rubbed one on his eyes, blinked a few times and looked at his feet on the ground before looking up to Martin– Spider-man.
"Okay." Martin hesitated for exactly one second longer than professional. "See you around."
See you around. Of every sentence in the language he could have chosen he chose 'See you around.' ? Stupid fucking disgrace of a man, you are, Martin Edwards. You really are.
Juhoon looked at him. Something crossed his face that Martin couldn't fully read from behind the mask, and then the corner of his mouth lifted, just slightly. "Maybe," he said. "Thanks. For... yeah." He glanced down at the pavement. "Thanks." And he went inside.
Martin stood on the street for five full seconds staring at the door that had just closed behind him. Then he shot a web at the nearest building and left, because standing in front of Juhoon's apartment building was something he was not equipped to process right now.
He did not go to Keonho's.
☥
The beach was empty, which was the whole point of Martin coming here. He sat on the cold sand with his mask pulled up to his nose to finally breathe and stared at the water and allowed himself, methodically and privately, to lose his mind finally, because what the actual fuck?
The waves came in. The waves went out.
Somewhere behind him the city glowed against the low clouds. See you around, he thought. That's what you said. See you around. Like you're two acquaintances who bumped into each other at a coffee shop. Like you didn't just hold him while he cried for ten minutes. Like you haven't been in love with him since you knew what being in love was. He let himself fall to his back onto the sand with a loud thud, groaned and slapped himself in the face and looked at the sky. Think about something else, think about some-fucking-thing else—
Keonho's. He didn't go to Keonho's again. And missed the opportunity to pause the movie every second and give them extra information.
The thing about Keonho — and he loved Keonho, Keonho was one of maybe five people on earth Martin would take a bullet for.— was that Keonho asked questions, well he sometimes didn't and that was also his thing, but Martin just knew he would tonight. He would ask questions. Caring, well meaning, deeply inconvenient questions. More questions in private since he not only knew Martin as Martin but also as Spider-Man. And then there was Seonghyeon. Seonghyeon would understand it was about Juhoon from the expression on Martin's face, Seonghyeon would look at Martin with those eyes that understood too much and say something quietly devastating like it's okay to still care about someone even if they hurt you and Martin would have to go home early and lie face down on his bed for at least an solid hour. He didn't have that in him tonight. Tonight he needed the beach and the cold and no one who knew his face. He stared at the sky and let himself actually think about it for the first time.
He was going to jump.
Martin had been Spider-Man for almost two years. He'd talked people down before — he was actually decent at it, which still surprised him, some nervous kid from Ottowa who still sometimes had communication problems talked people down. Unbelievable. — but it had always been strangers. People he could care about abstractly and then web-swing away from, people that would sadden him for a day then he'd be so busy trying to save the city he'd forget. This was different. This was so seriously different and he hadn't even known it was possible for things to be this different.
First my mom. Then James. Now you.
He turned the sentence over in his head for a thousand times. Juhoon's mom. He'd known Juhoon's mom, she used to make them ramyeon when they stayed over too late and pretend she didn't notice it was past their bedtime, she'd had this laugh which was just like Juhoon's, he even accidentally called him mom one time and started crying and she took him in his arms and told him that was okay and—
Something had happened there, clearly, something Martin hadn't been around to see. And James had known. Had been carrying it. And Martin had spent four years being angry about something he'd never had the full picture of and he— Why James though?
Zhao Yufan.
Martin stared at the sky and felt something hot and uncomfortable move through him that wasn't quite anger and wasn't quite grief but was something in between and the only thing he knew was that it felt like absolute shit.
He remembered that hall. Tenth grade, nearly six in the morning, a day he came to school early for once, he'd caught James alone for once, which basically never happened, and he'd asked. Straight out, because Martin had never been good at the long way around. What happened with Juhoon? Why does he hate me? And James— calm, composed, older-than-his-years James, who Martin had introduced to Juhoon, who Martin had thought of as one of his closest friend once—Who Martin even gave him the nickname James because no one could pronunce his name, Who Martin looked at and said 'We should call you James since your favorite Star Trek character is James!' — looked at him with this expression that Martin had spent two years cataloguing as dismissal, as you're not worth enough to know, and will never be.
But it hadn't been that, had it?
James had looked like he was about to cry. Martin remembered it now with different eyes, turned it over and saw something completely different. He hadn't been dismissing Martin. He'd been holding something so heavy that one wrong word might have broken him open in the middle of a school hallway. It's none of your business, Martin, he had said and it wasn't on purpose to hurt Martin like Martin thought it was. It had been the only thing James could say without saying anything, without breaking something that wasn't his to break.
James had known. Had been there, had been carrying it, he was the one Juhoon let in when he pushed everyone else out.
Why him and not me? Some ugly part of Martin that never surfaced but kicked the wall of his brains really violently thought, and he hated himself for that immediately. Why does James get to know and I don't? I was supposed to be Juhoon best friend. Eight years of friendship that was also wished to not only be a friendship and suddenly I wasn't even worthy of knowing why he started to hate me? He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. Because you're not the one he trusts, obviously. Because something happened and he decided you were the person he couldn't have anymore and James was the person he could, and that's not him betraying you, that's just how he feels and what he wants, and you have absolutely nothing to say, no right to object.
That's just four years of a story he hadn't been given. And the worst part, the part currently sitting in the centre of his chest like a fat ox — was that he couldn't even be angry about it. He'd tried the anger. He'd worn it for four years like a second skin and it had never once actually fit and tonight it had dissolved completely, standing on a side street in the biting November cold with Juhoon's hands gripping the front of his suit, and now there was just this... this open, aching, completely unresolved thing. Everything felt like pouring alcohol on an open wound.
The waves came in. The waves went out.
You can't just decide you understand now, you still don't know shit, he told himself. You don't get to flip a switch and suddenly be the person he can trust because you happened to catch him. That's not how it works. That's not something you're owed. He knew that. He really did. And yet he felt like it was better to act like he didn't, but he did. And he was going to keep knowing it and not tuck the thought in a box in his brain and lock it far far away. Nobody owed nobody shit, anyway.
He didn't know the full story. He might never know the full story, or at least not as Martin, not as the person Juhoon had decided four years ago to leave behind. And maybe he didn't deserve it. Maybe that wasn't his to ask for.
But he'd gotten a maybe tonight.
A tired, small maybe that was barely, atomically there from someone who had just been through the probably one of the worst nights of their life, and it was the most Juhoon had given him in four years, and it had come to Spider-Man and not to Martin, and Martin was just going to have to live with the absolute insanity of that.
This is so stupid, he thought. This is genuinely one of the stupidest situations a human being has ever been in.
If he can't talk to me as Martin — He already knew where this was going, already fully aware of how unhinged it was— he doesn't have to talk to me as Martin. He had a suit. He had a different voice and a different name and two years of practice being someone other than himself. And Juhoon had looked at Spider-Man tonight— a stranger, technically, just some guy who caught him — and he had cried and he had apologised and he had said maybe like a door left slightly open. Martin was a lot of things. A vigilante, objectively a good friend, a matchmaker, an insomniac, your not-so-friendly neighbor Spider-Man.
But he was not the kind of person who left a door slightly open and walked away from it. Not anymore, couldn't do it anymore. He had tried that for four years and it had not worked and Juhoon had almost died tonight. He pulled his mask back down. Stood up. Brushed the sand off the suit.
Keonho is going to think something is wrong when I don't show up even for the last minutes, he thought. I'll text him. I'll say I got caught up on patrol. He'll know I'm lying and he won't push it because he is an annoyingly good friend than I ever was to anyone.
He looked at the water one more time. This is insane, he told himself. He swung home. I am a sick, sick person.