Chapter Text
Sousuke cannot believe he could have been so stupid, completely forgetting the potatoes like that. Everyone knows you can’t have curry without potatoes, especially not on your birthday. He checks his watch as he hurries along the sidewalk, clouds of breath puffing up in front of his face – his mother shouldn’t be home for another hour or so. Originally he’d told her not to work on her birthday (her birthday! Who wants to go to work on their birthday?), but now he finds himself grateful for his mother’s commitment and work ethic. This way she can come home to a nice warm dinner and find nothing amiss. Maybe he can pick up dessert while he’s at the store too, he muses, as he approaches the crossing.
So caught up in his thoughts about what dessert might be best is he that he steps onto the road without looking, entirely unaware of his surroundings. It isn’t until he sees his stark shadow cast on the asphalt by a bright light source and hears a blaring horn that he turns and looks eyes with the driver careening towards him, showing no signs of slowing or stopping. Sousuke freezes, heart beating rapidly, begging his legs to run or jump or anything, but all he can find it in himself to do is close his eyes for the few milliseconds he has left.
There is a lurch, and his stomach swoops, and then he is briefly airborne. He opens his eyes and lets out a scream when he finds the ground rapidly approaching, before it suddenly halts in its approach and he is gently placed on the ground. He dimly registers an arm slipping away from his waist and patting his shoulder a couple of times before withdrawing.
“In future, make sure to look both ways before crossing!”
Sousuke looks up dazedly to find the source of the cheerful voice.
In front of him stands someone clad entirely in what looks like blue and yellow spandex with web-like patterns spirally out from a tacky-looking spider right in the centre of his chest. He also notes the sticky silk ropes coming out of a little contraption attached to the spandex stranger’s wrist, and the wide white lenses that stare at him unnervingly.
Sousuke opens and closes his mouth, trying to find the words to speak. His mouth feels sticky and dry and the air in his lungs seems wholly insufficient for his body to function appropriately and his brain keeps stuttering and starting, but eventually he manages to establish a neural pathway between the thoughts in his head and his mouth.
“Are you some kind of pervert?”
Though the stranger’s face is completely obscured and expressionless – apart from those strange white lenses – Sousuke can somehow pinpoint the moment when his words register and the stranger’s face falls. “A what?”
Now that he’s gotten over his initial inability to speak, Sousuke is on a roll. “Only a pervert would run around in tight clothes so that he could grab poor innocent cuties like me! You probably get a kick out of being some kind of saviour to damsels in distress so you can have power over them! Weirdo!”
There is a stunned silence before the stranger points at him accusingly. “You were gonna die! What, did you want me to just watch that happen?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Sousuke says scornfully, looking down his nose at him.
“No! I’m not a pervert!” the stranger yells. “I’m Spider-Man!”
Sousuke scoffs. “You’re not a man. You’re a kid, I can tell!”
“I am not!” Spider-Man squeaks. He clears his throat, then repeats in an obviously fake deep voice, “I am not.”
Sousuke stares at him, unconvinced. Spider-Man shuffles his feet, not looking at Sousuke anymore, then straightens and strikes some kind of... power pose, maybe? Whatever it is, it looks stupid, and Sousuke opens his mouth to say as such when he’s rudely interrupted.
“Anyway! I’m your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man,” Spider-Man declares. “I’m here to help with everyday troubles and fight supervillains!”
“I don’t think I trust a child with fighting supervillains,” Sousuke tells him flatly. “Also, I don’t think I trust you with everyday troubles, considering right now you’re troubling me.” He looks at his watch, watching the time inch closer and closer to when his mother will be home.
Spider-Man lets out a squawk as Sousuke pushes past him. “How am I troubling you?”
“I have errands to run, and you’re holding me up,” Sousuke says haughtily, steadfastly ignoring the way Spider-Man jogs after him.
“Oh!” Spider-Man brightens and falls into step next to him. “I can take you where you need to go! It’ll be faster!”
“Absolutely not.” Sousuke walks faster. “I’m not giving a pervert like you more opportunities to take advantage of me!”
“I am not a pervert!” Spider-Man says crossly, but then he suddenly stops and cocks his head. “Oh... okay, sorry, I can’t help with your errands. I’ve got to go.” He moves in the direction of a side street, waving at Sousuke. “Stay safe! I’ll see you around!”
“I hope not,” Sousuke grumbles as he watches Spider-Man shoot sticky ropes – they’re probably meant to resemble spider silk, he realises – out of the strange wrist contraptions and swing away, running over rooftops and disappearing behind a building. What a nuisance, Sousuke thinks as he turns to speedwalk to the store. He’s ended up having to go to such lengths to make a simple curry for his mother’s birthday.
Later, when Sousuke’s mother is home and sitting at the table with a plate of steaming curry in front of her, beaming widely, Sousuke says, “This curry cost me a whole lot of trouble, so you’d better like it.”
“Trouble?” his mother laughs. “It’s only a curry.” Sousuke elects not to mention how this particular curry nearly cost him his life. Somehow, he doesn’t think his mother would appreciate hearing about that. “And anyway, of course I’ll like it! I love anything my lovely Sousuke makes for me.” She reaches over to ruffle his hair and Sousuke lets her – just for today, and only because it’s her birthday. He still reserves the right to loudly complain about it, though.
--
By the next day at school, Sousuke has resolved to completely forget about Spider-Pervert. New superheroes pop up every other month in Kamome and then disappear in a matter of weeks, and Sousuke is sure Spider-Man is no different. He definitely doesn’t have what it takes to fight supervillains – or even rescue sweet, innocent civilians from reckless, unlawful drivers, Sousuke thinks sniffily. Anyway, Spider-Man is just a dumb kid who can’t even take a little light criticism. He’s not built of strong enough stuff to go up against some of the worse supervillains around, like that awful Mermaid Queen that had shown up a couple of weeks ago. Consequently, Sousuke can move on his life with the reassurance that Spider-Man will fade into obscurity in no time.
He has more pressing concerns anyway, like the math test his teacher has just reminded them is coming up after the weekend. Sousuke does not remember her telling them about that in the first place, but most of his classmates seem unsurprised. Maybe he just forgot about it. Oh, but he doesn’t even know what’s on it, or how much it’s worth. And it’s not like he can really ask his classmates, he thinks glumly as he watches them break off into groups as the lunch bell rings.
The best thing to do is probably to go to the library and get a head start on looking through all their content for this term so far. It’s best to cover all his bases just to be safe, and there’s no way he can work here, not with all his classmates laughing and talking and eating lunch.
Mind made up, Sousuke gathers his math book and pencil case and heads to the library. He only has half an hour at most, once he’s accounted for the walk there and back, but any time he can get to study for this stupid test is precious.
Despite his earlier resolution to completely forget the whole experience, Sousuke finds his thoughts drifting to Spider-Man as he walks. He supposes he should actually be grateful – he shudders to think of how bad his mother’s birthday would have been if he did get hit by that care – but even so, Spider-Man was completely unprofessional afterwards. If Sousuke is ever unfortunate enough to run into him again, he’ll impart some wisdom on the intricacies of social competency on him.
(Sousuke is not the greatest authority on this, but Spider-Man doesn’t need to know that. And if nothing else, Sousuke can at least advise him to wear something other than that hideous blue and yellow spandex suit. It’s so ugly. What on earth was Spider-Man thinking? He probably wasn’t thinking, Sousuke reasons, considering that he doesn’t seem to even have a brain to begin with.)
He's just around the corner from the library when there’s a shout from his left.
“Hey! It’s you!”
Sousuke blinks as a garish traffic safety earring swings into view.
The first thing Sousuke thinks to himself is: Wow, what a lame earring. The second thing he thinks is: Hang on, I’ve seen that stupid earring before.
He blinks and looks at the face the earring is attached to. Sure enough, there’s Minamoto, his old classmate. They hadn’t really stayed in touch after first year, and Sousuke had just assumed that Minamoto forgot about him like everyone else he thought was his friend from that class. But his heart skips a beat now that Minamoto is standing here, talking to him, like no time at all has passed.
“Oh! Hello, Minamoto-kun. I hope you’re well.”
Sousuke is, admittedly, a bit out of practice with the careful pleasant demeanour he’d cultivated during first year. It just didn’t seem worth it after he transitioned to second year and lost all the friends he thought he’d made using that persona. After some careful reflection, he’d come to the conclusion that he too would have forgotten about someone as boring as that polite, quiet version of himself. It had seemed best to simply retreat into the background and make neither friends that would forget him nor enemies that would relentlessly tease him for his feminine appearance and overconfidence.
So it’s been a little while since Sousuke has really talked to someone else around his age, not counting Spider-Man, since Sousuke doesn’t think perverts and weirdos should be granted personhood. But on the off chance that Minamoto didn’t forget him, on the off chance that maybe he has a friend at school after all, Sousuke will bring back that quiet, polite classmate with no opinions of his own. It’s a small sacrifice, really, for the one thing he's craved all his life.
Minamoto furrows his brows, scrutinising Sousuke. Sousuke keeps a mild, pleasant smile on his face and betrays none of the nervousness he really feels. Most of all, he does not comment on that awful, ugly earring, or on the umbrella that Minamoto is lugging around indoors for some unknown reason.
“Hi,” Minamoto says eventually. Sousuke does recall Minamoto being completely lacking in manners of any sort, so he’s unsurprised when Minamoto doesn’t return his pleasantries. “What’re you doing?”
Preparing to fail my test, Sousuke thinks. “Just reviewing some material for my math test next week,” he says, that same bland smile pasted on his face as he turns his notebook around to show Minamoto the cover.
“Oh,” Minamoto says, brows still furrowed. He looks baffled, and Sousuke privately wonders if perhaps he’s suffered some kind of head trauma to make him forget a concept as simple as a math test. “Are you good at math–” he pauses and stares at the notebook a little more – “Mitsuba?”
“Oh, I’m alright,” Sousuke says cheerily. This is a blatant lie – Sousuke is terrible at math. There’s nothing he hates more in the whole world. Thankfully, Minamoto is acting too strangely to pick up on the lie. He’s still staring at Sousuke as if surprised to see him there, even though he was the one who came up to Sousuke. Sousuke is willing to ignore this strangeness seeing as he doesn’t exactly have many options when it comes to friends and beggars can’t be choosers, but it is starting to get mildly uncomfortable. “What are you up to then, Minamoto?” he asks, boldly soldiering past Minamoto’s complete absence of social awareness.
“Oh, I’m going to the vending machine,” he replies, finally blinking and seeming to snap himself out of it. “I lost scissors paper rock.”
“That’s a shame,” Sousuke says sympathetically. This is one of the few instances in which he’s glad to be friendless – it would irritate him to no end if he had to go buy drinks from the vending machine just for losing a silly game like he’s seen his classmates do so many times.
Minamoto nods emphatically. He seems back to his usual self, bright and loud and always moving. “Actually, I probably need to hurry! Sorry for interrupting your study. I’ll see you around!” He waves and dashes off, weaving through clusters of students who all glare at him as he runs past.
Sousuke waves back, a warm feeling curling in his chest. “Yeah, I hope so.” He stands in the middle of the hallway until he can’t see Minamoto anymore, a small smile settling on his face.
He knows it’s silly of him to treasure an interaction that lasted only a couple of minutes so much. He also knows it’s silly to hope that their conversation meant anything more than a passing greeting to Minamoto. More likely than not, he’ll go back to class and forget he ever saw Sousuke, and they’ll both return to regular life. Minamoto is the kind of person that has friends he buys food from the vending machine for, and who can get away with being strange and off-putting in his conversations with people, and Sousuke is the kind of person who says five sentences to an old classmate and holds onto the memory as if it’s some kind of major life event.
Still, a kernel of hope blooms deep in his chest. Even if it means that he has to freeze his face in a placid smile for the rest of his days, Sousuke hopes beyond reason that Minamoto will speak to him again.