Work Text:
Sometimes, Matthew has a difficult time recalling what his everyday life was like Pre-Bite.
Sure, he didn’t love breaking a piece of dinnerware every other day because of his newfound strength, or suffering through the constant vertigo in the beginning, or jumping in his skin when he sensed someone across the street sneezing. Maybe, in another life, he was just a regular college kid, not some guy who wears tight spandex as he helps a grandma cross traffic, swinging across high rises and sitting atop subway carts. In that world, he’d have more time for his friends and family instead of his mortal enemies and intergalactic beings.
In that world, Matthew isn’t Spider-Man.
But if given the chance to start over again, he wouldn’t have it any other way. He has a healthy outlet for his abundance of energy (Hanbin would argue that the healthy part is debatable), he gets to meet people in all walks of life, and more importantly than anything else, he loves helping those around him. Even without a gun to his head, Matthew would say that, point blank, he loves being Spider-Man.
One thing’s for sure, though—Spidey-sense or not, Matthew’s always had a sixth sense when it comes to Hanbin.
As such, when Matthew is handing a bakery cashier an egregious eight whole dollar bills for his pain au chocolat, the hair on his arms suddenly stand up. A tree falls down on the other side of the world. The earth tilts on its axis by a tenth of a degree. It’s a life divided into a distinct before and after.
A deep sense of unease punches him in the gut, and Matthew reflexively grabs his phone and calls Hanbin. By the time it goes straight to voicemail, he’s already dashed out of the bakery.
They met when they were twelve, in that twilight of every year when they’re both the same age. It was decidedly nondescript—Matthew sat in front of Hanbin at the SHSAT Saturday prep class they attended, both of them pressed against the wall as they waited for the clock to tick down. Hanbin tapped him on the shoulder to ask for help on the English section, because he had newly immigrated to New York only a few months prior and was already thrown to the wolves to battle the English language via standardized testing.
It was a decidedly nondescript first meeting, but it meant the world to Matthew, because the moment Hanbin’s fingertips touched Matthew’s shoulder, the two of them were already set in stone.
Afterwards was a blur of playing Pokémon Platinum over summer breaks, locked ankles as they rode the train home from school, riding bikes down the winding streets of Elmhurst. He called Hanbin hyung even though he didn’t even really call Yaebin noona. Their families went apple picking together in the Catskills every autumn. Matthew stopped growing while Hanbin still had fresh stretch marks on the back of his knees. Hanbin came out to him at fifteen, teary-eyed and so afraid of his reaction that even the sky poured with his trepidation. Matthew didn’t have the heart to tell Hanbin at the time that he knew he was gay from the moment he saw he’d taped a poster of Jaehyun shirtless over his bed. What Matthew didn’t know was that seeing a single shitty 480p gif of Dylan O’Brien on Twitter would lead him to coming out as bi to Hanbin just a year later.
All that to say, Matthew and Hanbin know each other inside and out. Then, Matthew got bit.
The train screeches to a halt, nearly hurling Matthew across the train car. Man, why did he think taking the 7 train was a good idea?
They’re already on their second delay, and Matthew feels his heart beating in his fucking knees when the conductor announces that there will be even more extensive delays due to train tracks on the Manhattan bridge catching fire.
He closes his eyes and mentally curses himself out for preventing its near collapse last month. He’d held it together with the power of some spider webs, ten dollars, and a dream—that’s all there really is to being Spider-Man.
When they finally reach the next station, only halfway to where Hanbin and his family live in Flushing, Matthew bolts out of the train car. Quickly shrugging on the emergency Spidey Suit he always keeps in his backpack, he activates the internal headset Taerae made for him. Hanbin still isn’t answering his calls, and Matthew fears his phone might be dead, so he calls Hanbin’s mom next.
It only takes one ring for her to pick up. “Oh? Matthew?”
“Eomma!” He does his best to keep his breaths even as he scales up the sides of this apartment building. A dog barks at him through someone’s windows. “Is Hanbin-hyung working today?”
Mama Han runs a local daycare in their neighborhood, and working there throughout their adolescence is largely what drove Hanbin to want to become a preschool teacher. He’s in his last semester for his degree in early education and, even now, he still works at the daycare on a flexible schedule when he has time in between classes.
“No,” she answers, confirming Matthew’s suspicions. Hanbin said he’d be studying at home today, but Matthew was hopeful that maybe he had just popped in to visit his mother. “Is something wrong?”
“Ah, no—” He ducks to avoid a collision with an oncoming pigeon, “—I… I got him a snack for studying!” Which is actually tr—shit! He forgot to take the pain au chocolat with him!
Mama Han coos at him. “Oh, well I’m pretty sure he’s at home. Is he not picking up his phone?”
Matthew doesn’t want to worry her over his Hanbin-Sense, though it’s never led him astray so far. “No, I just want to surprise him. Thanks eomma, talk to you later!” He tilts his head to the right twice to hang up; it’s a neat handless motion Taerae programmed into the suit.
He slings a web onto the top of a bus and jumps on to hitch a ride. This probably counts as fare evasion, but whatever. It drives down a familiar route, and once it gets close to Hanbin’s neighborhood, he swings onto a neighbor’s branches as inconspicuously as he can.
“Hey, loser,” Taerae’s voice suddenly jump scares him, volume booming through the headset, and he almost falls to the ground. “Saw you were active. What’s cookin’, good lookin’?”
“I think something’s wrong with Hanbin.”
“That—is the opposite of what I wanted to hear, actually.”
The neighbor of said tree, Mrs. Dudnik, peers out the windows, and Matthew hides in its leaves. “And what did you want to hear?” Matthew whispers.
“I’m glad you asked. I was hoping Jiwoong Kim got kidnapped, and you were going to go rescue him, that way you’d get on his good side and pass him my number and vouch for me.”
“That sounds like an awful lot of work I’d have to do as a wingman.”
“Boo-hoo, get used to it, babe. Have you seen his abs? Then you’d know that…”
Taerae continues to go on about the hot Target employee turned influencer turned model, so Matthew briefly tunes him out and mutes his mic.
Matthew met Taerae in a very Taerae-esque fashion. Once the moniker of Spider-Man started picking up steam with the locals when Matthew was seventeen, he made a gag email address ([email protected]) and somewhat less of a gag Craigslist post asking for someone to help him make some Spidey gadgets, or at least something to help him maintain his wrists’ spider web production. It went largely unanswered, aside from getting him unwillingly subscribed to Hot Girls In Your Area newsletters, and Matthew eventually forgot about it.
That is, until Taerae sent him a cold email during the middle of their freshman year. It was a proposition to upgrade Matthew’s gear, given that he’s tinkered with robotics since he was young and was set on becoming a robotics engineer.
iamnotspiderman9: what’s the catch?
taeraevision: you act as my guinea pig
iamnotspiderman9: at no cost?
taeraevision: if my prototypes explode, you die
iamnotspiderman9: it’s a deal. here’s my p.o. box
A month after that, Matthew sat in a random seat at his history lecture, and the guy next to him froze. Matthew’s Spidey-sense tingled, but he was unprepared for the guy to lean in and ask, “So, how are you liking the mechanical web shooters?”, pointing at the wristbands [email protected] made for him, visible under the sleeves of his hoodie.
Matthew lightly smacked himself in the face to break out of his reverie. “They’re really great so far, they’ve made my life way more convenient. Are you open to criticism?”
Taerae shrugged, “As long as you know the risk of wearing any new versions of them. Deal?’
Matthew stuck out his hand, and Taerae shook it. “Deal.”
Once Mrs. Dudnik looks away, Matthew quickly jumps to the next street, right into Hanbin’s backyard. Areum usually isn’t home at this time of the day, so Matthew climbs up the wall of the house and pushes open the window Hanbin always leaves unlocked for him. He crawls inside and, to his dismay, Hanbin isn’t there. However, Chef Boyardee immediately runs up to him, meowing non-stop with distress.
Matthew crouches down and runs his hand along the cat’s back to calm her down. “Hey there, Chef, d’you where Hanbin-hyung is?”
He has a sinking feeling in his stomach when he takes one glance around the room, and it’s clear a struggle recently occurred. Hanbin’s desk chair is toppled over, his textbooks and index cards thrown askew, and a single slipper lays upside down on the floor.
Chef Boyardee prances across the room and jumps onto Hanbin’s desk. There’s a piece of printer paper neatly laid on top. The first three letters are clearly cut outs from magazines, but it seems like the perpetrator gave up quickly and just wrote the rest in cute bubble letters.
To Spider-Man.
He knows who he is. Meet at 6 PM, 5th floor, or no Hanbin. No funny business.
Underneath is an address for somewhere in Midtown. Matthew looks at his smart watch. It’s already a quarter after five.
“...and his skincare line is actually pretty legit. Anyway, what’s up with Hanbin?”
Matthew unmutes himself. “Well, it looks like Hanbin was the one who got kidnapped instead.”
Now where was he before? Oh yeah, and then Matthew got bit when he was sixteen.
He and their friends were bored so they snuck into the abandoned Worth Street Station, oohing and ahhing at the graffiti and dim lights, jumping at the squeaks of rats and their own coughs. As they walked down the train tracks, Matthew saw, or at least he thought he saw, the glint of a coin on the ground. He bent down to grab it, and then cried out when a sudden sharp pain pierced through his hand and up his arm. He faintly heard Hanbin shout in alarm before he doubled over and, through his blurred vision, he saw a fuckass fluorescent spider still attached to his hand. He viciously squashed it, but he could already see where the venom traveled through his veins, green streaks bulging through his skin. The visual had him dry heaving.
Then he snapped his head right around and, with superhuman speed, Matthew caught Hanbin mid-fall, Hanbin’s face a mere inch away from touching the deadly third rail. Hanbin had rushed over to him but tripped over a track. Matthew didn’t even know he was there. Suffice it to say, they left the station pretty quickly afterward.
“Honestly, I should’ve posted a picture of my spider bite in r/mildlyinteresting back then,” Matthew says while swinging across the Queensboro Bridge. “Then Reddit would’ve given me some solid advice, like telling me to go to the hospital—“
“—and after they saw you producing webs with radiation all up in your veins, you would’ve been taken in as an agent of the government,” Taerae deadpans. He blows a loud raspberry. “No thanks.”
So, like any sensible teenager, Matthew tried to hide the Bite at first, which is hilarious in hindsight. Hanbin still teases him about it. He told absolutely no one, and he went about the next few days wondering if he was going to randomly drop dead at any moment.
Instead, he developed constant sweats, a ravenous hunger remedied by him razing their freezer for chicken, and was shocked still when he started to produce copious amounts of spider webs out of his wrists. It was pretty gnarly. Additionally came the heightened senses and increased strength so naturally—naively—he was sure he’d get another growth spurt after the Bite.
Matthew no longer dreams big.
But in the least boastful way ever… the rest of it came pretty naturally to him too. He hung upside down by his web to train his core, which led to him trying swinging through abandoned buildings for the thrill of it, and from his new unlimited vantage points, he could see all sorts of petty crime happening around his neighborhood.
That evolved into a snatched purse saved here, preventing a breaking and entering there. He’d pull his bleach-painted hood up tight and do what needed to be done. But then a street fight went wrong and landed him with a sprained ankle and a black eye, and Hanbin refused to let him into his room unless Matthew told him what happened.
“This has been going all month now, Mashu. You avoid me for weeks on end, and then come here all beaten up?”
“I told you, hyung, I crashed my bike into a bush.”
“You’ve already said that to me twice this month.” Matthew winced, he really needed to up his fib game. “If that was true, you’d have gone home or to urgent care. Instead, you came here.”
Matthew let out a wounded noise from the back of his throat and peered up at him pitifully, hitting Hanbin with a look that’s never not swayed him.
Hanbin sucked in his breath and resolutely closed his eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. A-and what’s with the hood, anyway? You look like that—that vigilante spider guy.”
Matthew coughed, avoiding eye contact.
Hanbin eyed him with suspicion. “Now that I think about it… spider guy started showing up a month ago. Swinging through the trees and all that.”
Matthew fiddled with his hoodie’s sleeves. “I don’t see how that has anything to do with anything.”
“Holy shit, it’s you?”
Matthew sniffled, and then there was the scent of metal and something wet dripped onto his hands. Hanbin gasped and held out his arms to hoist Matthew up through the window like he always does. Figuring the jig was up, and hiding anything from Hanbin was pure hell anyway, Matthew shook his head and crawled up the wall, sticking to it with his fingertips.
Even though Hanbin gave him the look of a shocked hamster, he still pulled him inside without a second thought, wiping Matthew’s bloody nose with his sleeve.
They sat on the floor of Hanbin’s room in silence while Hanbin cleaned up Matthew’s scratches and got him ice to press to his black eye. He massaged anti-inflammatory ointment into Matthew’s ankle, then paused and pressed a kiss to Matthew’s cheek.
“I heard you helped find Mrs. Dudnik’s dog yesterday,” Hanbin grinned, revealing his whisker dimples. He pressed his forehead to Matthew’s. “Thank you, Spider-Man.”
“Mister Spider-Man, Mister Spider-Man!”
Matthew nervously looks at his watch; there’s only twenty minutes until six, but he can spare a minute for a kid. He perches on a traffic light pole and finds the middle schooler below him on the sidewalk. “What’s up, kid?”
The kid gasps and stares at him wide-eyed for a moment, shocked that he actually got a response. Matthew will never get used to that. He doesn’t mean to sound self-deprecating, but he’s truly nothing special. He’s still Matthew, just with a little more sugar and spice added to his mix now.
“I have a BLT for you!” the middle schooler says, brandishing the sandwich wrapped in tin foil. “I heard you like ‘em.”
Taerae cackles in his little gremlin voice, the sadistic fucker.
Right, so a few months ago, Matthew forgot to take off his suit when he went to a bodega, and someone posted a video of him ordering a BLT onto TikTok. It went mind-bogglingly viral, and now everyone tries to give him one when they see him passing through. He hasn’t eaten a single BLT since. Honestly, he needs to steer this public conception of him towards fried chicken instead. How epic would it be to catch a drumstick mid-fight?
Still, if Santa must bear the burden of milk and cookies every Christmas, then Matthew too shall humbly receive a BLT on a roll for his troubles.
Matthew opens his arms wide, and the kid tosses it up to him and and cutely cheers when he catches it.
“Thank you, my fine man,” Matthew salutes. “The next bad guy I catch is dedicated to you.”
Taerae fake-gags. “That’s cheesy, even for you.”
Matthew ignores him and, with another wave to the kid, he takes off once again.
The first time Hanbin really saw Matthew in action was when Hanbin texted Matthew in the middle of the night to come and rescue a stray kitten stuck in a tree outside his house. Matthew zoomed over and scaled the tree easily, this newfound agility already sticking to him like a second skin.
When Matthew hung upside down outside his window, dodging the kitten in his arm’s hisses and scratches, Hanbin just stared at him, unmoving and mouth slightly agape. Matthew looked down (up?) at himself; he was wearing his new DIY suit that Yaebin stitched up for him (yeah, she found out right after Hanbin did, and then beat him up for not telling her first), and he hadn’t taken a shower yet, so he probably stunk. They were deep in the midst of summertime, and this little world was full of the sound of crickets chirping and the glow of fireflies circling around him.
“Hyung?”
Hanbin grabbed his face with firm but gentle hands and kissed him for the first time.
Matthew gasped into it but, really, it just felt like relief, like he was finally breathing right. It was a life divided into a distinct before and after; that’s his Hanbin-hyung.
Then the kitten in between them meowed, clearly over this life-changing moment they were experiencing. Hanbin promptly forgot about Matthew and went right into cooing at his new real partner for life, the orange cat soon to be dubbed Chef Boyardee.
That’s fine, Matthew gets it. He’d die for Chef, too.
The address turns out to be an innocuous parking lot building. He looks around him to make sure no one notices him—not exactly an easy feat in a bright blue and red suit, but he makes it work. Once the coast is clear, he heads inside.
Matthew’s blood goes cold when he sees something on the ground. It’s Hanbin’s Ditto keychain, and Matthew knows it’s Hanbin’s, because it has the scratch from when Matthew thought it would be a smart idea to carry Hanbin and swing him to a class he was late for, and they nearly got hit by a bus. The side mirror grazed the keychain.
He picks it up and jumps in his skin he gets another call—seriously, why is he so popular today?
Matthew puts Taerae on hold. “ Hello? ”
“Who pissed in your salad today? Rude.”
Matthew deflates. ”Sorry Hao, but now’s not a really good time—”
“Does it have anything to do with Hanbin?” Matthew can hear the pout seep through his voice, “We were supposed to body double over FaceTime while we studied, but he’s not answering my calls.”
“Ah, well—”
”Hmph, I thought so. Where are you guys? Wait, I have you on Find My, hold on—”
”No!” Matthew shouts way too loudly, his voice echoing through the lot. He lowers his voice. “We need you on standby, okay?”
Matthew can physically feel Hao’s eyes judging on him through his voice alone. “Matthew, what’s going on?”
When Matthew moved out for college—they both stayed in the city for school, but Hanbin attended a college only a short commute away while Matthew’s school was in Manhattan, and spending his freshman year constantly commuting there from and to Queens shaved a good five years off his life—they got into an argument while Hanbin was helping him unpack in his new dorm.
After being glued at the hip for the last third of their lives, Hanbin was worried sick about Matthew being more than a mere few blocks away ( You’re only a train ride away, hyung—okay, don’t give me that look, maybe a few extra buses too if I’m unlucky ). More specifically, Hanbin was worried that Matthew would get banged up after a bad fight, not tell anyone, and then slowly bleed to death alone in his room.
“What would make you think that?”
Hanbin hit him with a square look. “You literally told me that you thought you were going to randomly drop dead after you got bit, and you still didn’t tell anyone about it.” He sighed. “Look, I’m just—I’m not always going to be there to patch you up when you get hurt.”
Matthew felt like a little kid being admonished. It stung. “You say that like I can’t take care of myself.”
Hanbin shot him a pained look. “Matthew, the problem is that you don’t take care of yourself when there’s other people to protect. I don’t want you realizing you’re too injured too late.”
“I’m not going to act like a dying cat. I—I’m not going to die quietly, hyung.”
”Baby, I don’t want you to die at all.”
”Woah there. Who’s dying?” someone chimed in. The both of them swerved their heads towards the door, and standing there was a guy straight out of a manhwa. Matthew double checked the name of his roommate. Hao Zhang.
It took them one lunch out together to put most of Hanbin’s fears to rest. My boyfriend is a night owl and a major klutz, Hanbin warned Hao, but you’re gonna love him.
Frankly, Hao took Matthew’s erratic schedule and frequent injuries with stride. He complains when Matthew’s suddenly running out of their room at three in the morning, but he’ll be awake (if droopy-eyed) and ready to patch Matthew up when he returns two hours later.
Matthew dropped all pretenses early on, and Hao didn’t pry, though he always gave him an opening to tell him the truth. After a while, Hao started coming up with more and more fantastical situations for his escapades every time instead.
(The elephant at the night circus you work at really tossed you around with its trunk, huh?)
(Even if the bank heist went poorly, did you sneak any cut of the money for me, too?)
(Hmm, underground wrestling just isn’t your calling now, is it?)
And it’s not like Matthew allowed himself to be careless and take advantage of Hao’s goodwill—he has to grow up, after all. Now he knows how to relocate his shoulders, or create a temporary sling for a broken arm, or tie a tourniquet if the situation ever arose.
It doesn’t hurt to have a nurse as a roommate, though.
”I’m studying to be a pediatric nurse practitioner, Xiuxiu,” Hao muttered, focused on cleaning the scrapes on Matthew’s forehead. An illegal chemical somehow got dumped into the water supply at the Bronx Zoo and caused a rogue gorilla to go on a rampage throughout the city, eventually scaling up the Empire State Building like it was King Kong. It was not an easy job subduing it. "You are not my target demographic of practice.”
Matthew hissed at the burn of the antiseptic on the scratches. Hao frowned in sympathy and petted his hair soothingly, not quite unlike the way one would pet a dog.
“But you make an exception for me,” Matthew said, beseeching.
Hao pinched his cheek. “For you? Everyone does.”
Matthew makes an exception, letting on more of the truth than he usually does. “Hanbin is…in trouble.”
”What?!”
”But I’ve got it under control!”
”Is he in danger? Are you? We should call the police or—”
” Please trust me. You, you can call 911 if I don’t come back home tonight, okay?”
”…Okay,” Hao dubiously assents. Matthew prepares himself to debate further, but then Hao simply sighs. “Just remember to be careful out there, Spider-Man.”
Hao hangs up before Matthew can, and he’s lucky that he’s wearing his mask, otherwise his jaw would’ve hit the fucking floor.
Taerae wheezes. “You are so bad at hiding it, man. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gunwook Park figured it out someday too. He’s, like, obsessed with you, dude. Every other article he writes is about you. Oh, look, he referenced you in an op-ed piece he wrote about ‘the necessity of Robin Hoods in the era of state surveillance’. It’s a good thing you’ve got someone like him on your side, huh?”
“Right,” Matthew half-heartedly agrees. He checks the time and it’s almost six, pushing him to leap across a whole flight of stairs at a time until he reaches the entryway to the fifth floor.
It heads inside, and it’s ominously dark and empty. When his eyes readjust to the lighting, he notices a tall, shadowy figure standing by the edge of the floor..
“Hello?” Matthew calls out.
There’s no response.
”Where’s Hanbin?”
The figure stands stock still.
Matthew cautiously walks closer. “You took Hanbin to get to me, right? Well I’m here now, so please let Hanbin go.”
“Just say the word,” Taerae whispers, the tenseness of the situation getting to him too, “and I’ll activate the web netting.”
When Matthew gets only a few feet away from the shadowy figure, Matthew realizes it looks familiar.
“Wait, Yujin? What are you doing here—oh no, not again.”
When Yujin turns around, his eyes are completely black and he wears a grin that stretches unnaturally across the entire expanse of his face. It’s distinctly inhuman.
“Miss me, Spider-Man?”
Right, remember the near collapse of the Manhattan Bridge last month?
A forecasted asteroid went off course and got pulled in by Earth’s gravity. Smaller fragments broke off from the main body and landed all across New York City. One impacted the Manhattan Bridge, and it was a hot mess. There were massive car crashes and many injured civilians, and the thunderous rain made it difficult to see any of it. Before the cracks in the bridge became severe, Matthew dove into the East River to save the people who fell into the water on impact.
One of them was Yujin.
He was already unconscious by the time Matthew pulled him out, and he immediately started performing CPR on him. Mid-chest compression, Matthew heard a sudden ringing in his ears and a searing pain pierce through his skull. He slapped a palm to his ear and felt something wet and slimy inside. He pulled out a whole ass slug and, disgusted, tossed it onto the beach.
Thankfully, soon enough Yujin gained consciousness again and coughed out all the water he swallowed. After Matthew wrapped up the bridge in his webs to hold it together, he went back to visit the injured and check up on how Yujin was doing.
“Thank you so much, Mister Spider, Mister Man, I don’t even know how to repay you,” Yujin’s brother, Gyuvin, ferociously shook Matthew’s hand.
“Yujin being okay is payment enough,” Matthew waved him off.
Gyuvin turned around and hugged Yujin, tall enough to pull Yujin off his feet and seemingly squeeze the life out of him. With a smile hidden under a carefully curated blank face, Yujin kicked his feet until Gyuvin let him go.
“Okay okay, fine. Ricky should be here any minute to pick us up.” Gyuvin turned back to Matthew. “Thank you again, Sir Spidey. Next time we see you, we’ll get you all the BLTs you could ever want.”
”Er, you really don’t have to—”
Gyuvin unsubtly nudged Yujin in the side.
“Thank you for saving m—”
Yujin suddenly cried out, cupping his ear in pain. Matthew saw a small black tail wiggle before it disappeared into Yujin’s ear canal. Oh no.
As it turns out, that asteroid was infested with parasitic alien slugs. However, as far as they know, all of them died that night, shriveling up at the touch of water.
All of them except for the one currently inhabiting Yujin’s body. So much for exceptions.
Matthew holds his hand out to placate it. “Heyyy there buddy, already back so soon?”
Because both the parasite and Yujin are so young, Yujin’s managed to tame it with varying levels of success. The parasite would try to take control of Yujin’s body whenever it could, and in the first few days it could be subdued by simply splashing water on him. It grew resistant pretty quickly though, so they’ve had to brainstorm other ways to keep it at bay.
About two weeks ago, Yujin started to exhibit the ability to shapeshift, which is admittedly kickass, along with some super speed and strength. It’s not entirely unlike Matthew’s abilities, and Taerae has a theory that the parasite got it from its brief mingle with Matthew’s ear canal, possibly making contact with his brain before Matthew pulled it out.
If true, and even if untrue, all of that is some gross business.
It makes sense, though, given how obsessed the parasite is with Matthew every time it takes control over Yujin’s body.
“Just tell me where Hanbin is, and you can do whatever you want with me,” Matthew lies.
Yujin laughs, and it sounds so cold coming from his mouth. “Hanbin’s sitting cozy upstairs, but,” he leans in with that same, unmoving grin, “I thought I told you, no funny business.”
“ Now! ”
Matthew tosses the web net, but by the time it goes off, Yujin’s already slammed him to the ground and morphed into some kind of viscous black slime, sliding out of the open floor.
“Fuck,” Matthew curses, and he chases after him.
He jumps off the ledge and uses a building from the opposite street to swing up to the parking lot’s rooftop. There was a large billboard with Jiwoong Kim’s face plastered over it, some kind of promotion from a BDSM-inspired photoshoot. And sat at the very top of the billboard was Hanbin.
Matthew slings his web onto the billboard and lands at the very left edge, with Hanbin on the very right.
Hanbin gasps, “Matthew!”
”Hyung, are you alright?” Matthew quickly scans Hanbin for injuries. There’s nothing visible aside from his clear distress. He’s wearing a blue plaid shirt with paint splatterings from the daycare kids, and his roots are starting to peek through his bleached hair.
“I am, but—”
Black tentacles wrap around Hanbin’s body, and Yujin morphs beside him. “Ah, but I thought we’d strike a deal, Spider-Man.” He holds Hanbin off the edge, and Hanbin squeaks, standing on his tippy toes to maintain some semblance of footing.
“No!” Matthew shouts. He steps forward, and Yujin holds Hanbin out even further.
“Give me your body, and I’ll give you Hanbin.”
Matthew holds his hands up in surrender. ”Can’t we do that on some solid ground? That sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
Yujin narrows his eyes at him, contemplating it. Matthew raises his arms higher. “No, I want it now.” God, rebellious teenagers really are ubiquitous, even the ones from outer space.
Matthew slowly nods, trying to inconspicuously reach behind him. “Alright then—wait! Is that Spider-Man?” Matthew points behind Yujin, using the parasite’s obsession with him to his own advantage.
“What? Where?” Yujin turns around, and Matthew hurls his BLT at his head.
Yujin immediately collapses, and Matthew bounds over to catch Yujin before he can fall off the billboard. However, Matthew’s foolproof plan comes with one crucial caveat: an unconscious Yujin means he loses his grip on Hanbin.
“Shit!”
“Matthew!”
Hanbin falls backwards off the billboard and this twelve story building, heading headfirst into the bustling traffic below.
Matthew dives after him without a second thought. Time suspends in this single moment, stretching across this sudden insurmountable distance between them, and Matthew’s eyes meet Hanbin’s as they fall down together. Then it all catches back up to him, and the deafening pounding of his heartbeat floods his ears as he shoots a web out towards Hanbin. It latches onto his chest just as there’s a loud honk of a delivery truck and the lights of the cars screeching to a stop around them blind him.
Matthew breathes harshly, and sweat drips down his face. He’s got one arm hanging onto a streetlight with some webbing, and in the other, he’s suspending Hanbin a mere foot away from the pavement.
For one excruciating second, Hanbin hangs there completely still. Then he regains consciousness, and his body spasms as he harshly gasps air into his lungs. Matthew feels his face crumble as he lets out a sob of relief.
He gently lowers Hanbin to the ground before dropping down to join him. Immediately, they get swarmed by pissed off taxi drivers, mega fans, and his least favorite, the press. He can already see all the news trucks backed up in the traffic.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees that viscous black slime drip down the street and into a grate drain. Matthew will deal with him another day. He has much more important things to worry about right now.
Matthew holds Hanbin close to him, cowering over Hanbin’s body and shielding it with his own, his hands greedily feeling up the pulse on Hanbin’s neck, the beating of his heart. He feels like a feral animal, snapping his teeth at anyone who dares approach them. He haphazardly grabs an extra Spidey Mask from his bag and lops it over Hanbin’s head to hide his face.
“Matthew, Matthew,” Hanbin rasps into his ear, looping his arms around Matthew’s neck and burying his face in his chest. He hears about a million camera flashes go off, but he doesn’t care. “Please, let’s just go home. Please. ”
Through the sea of paparazzi and reporters taking their pictures and shoving mics into their faces, Gunwook Park appears as a beacon of light. Rather than pressing for Hanbin’s identity or demanding how he let Yujin—now known enough to be dubbed Venom by the public—get away, he uses his large frame to create a pathway for them to get out of the crowd.
Once they’re out, Gunwook leans in with his notepad in hand, and Matthew braces himself, but Gunwook simply nods towards Hanbin and asks, “Is he okay?”
Matthew heaves out a sigh of relief. “He is. He will be.”
Gunwook smiles, and the genuine toothy grin makes him look younger than he seems. He gestures like he’s tipping a hat forward. “Thank you, Spider-Man.”
The attention from the aftermath is overwhelming, with TMZ pumping out magazine covers left and right questioning who Hanbin is to their friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Paparazzi swarmed Hanbin’s house for a week straight, and Areum managed to scare them off by lugging her training equipment into the crowds. So thankfully, the noise dies down quickly enough, as a story about a man held hostage atop a billboard is but a blip in the ocean when it comes to strange occurrences in this city. Still, Hanbin nearly has to use a crowbar to wretch Matthew off the ground from his groveling.
Matthew meets with Yujin weekly now to help him train his control over Venom, which is still shaky, but the kid’s got a good head on his shoulders. When he’s the one in control, he moves around like water, adapting to his newfound powers way better than Matthew ever did at his age.
Matthew doesn’t have plans to reveal his real identity to Yujin any time soon, but it feels like an inevitability. Yujin deserves to know, to truly know, that he isn’t alone in dealing with this significant change to his life.
The amount of people who know that Matthew is Spider-Man should be alarming. It compromises his safety and privacy at every possible turn. It compromises their safety and privacy at every possible turn. And yet, Matthew can’t help but feel all the love laden in there too—that there are this many people willing to keep his secret, that they care enough about him to worry when he dons the suit, that they know him well enough to understand why he does it all anyway.
And the one who understands him best is currently wriggling out of his hold.
”This is going to be the last time you drop me off like this,” Hanbin giggles, blatantly feeling up Matthew’s bicep before getting out of his arms. “No one’s going to steal me away from my night class, you don’t need to escort me everywhere.”
Matthew pouts, then pulls his mask off to make sure Hanbin can really see it. “But what if I want to?”
“Well, now I can’t say no to that face.” Hanbin playfully shoves Matthew’s shoulders. “But shoo. Don’t you have more important things to do? A world to save?”
Matthew blows a raspberry, and Hanbin blows one back. He turns to walk to his lecture hall, and Matthew jumps onto a street lamp for purchase, scanning through all the current goings-on in the city on his smart watch. It’s an abnormally slow night, and all he really wants to do is spend time with his boyfriend. Guess he’ll have to be the one waiting at home for Hanbin to return for once, it’s only fair.
“Wait! Hyung, you forgot something.”
Hanbin turns around, and Matthew swoops down to give him a kiss. Hanbin deepens it, and Matthew giggles against his lips. He gently pushes Hanbin away. “Now shoo, you’re learning how to save the world, after all. Raising the next generation and all that.”
“Pick me up at nine?”
Matthew grins wide. “You know it.”
Hanbin presses one more lingering kiss to his lips, and then he runs to the lecture building. He turns back to take one last look at Matthew before heading in.
Matthew swings up to sit on the tallest building on campus, and he digs his dinner out from his bag. Someone heard his cries for fried chicken and had actually tossed him a box earlier. He takes a big bite, and it’s as juicy and tender and slightly soggy as he was hoping it’d be. The revolution really is happening.
Matthew stares out across the city skyline at the millions of lives in progress. He wonders what’s going on in all of them.
Well, he has two hours to kill until his boyfriend is free from the clutches of academia. He has time to find out—so where should he start?