fearless || peter parker

thirteen || PDA, and fighting the universe

I stayed on the roof with Spider-Man a little longer than I should have, because the distraction was just enough to keep my mind from supper with Madison. I booked it home from the rooftops, using a trail here and there to navigate. It was almost funny how the very topic of balancing hero/regular person life was the reason I had to leave the conversation.

It was 8:15 by the time I had entered my room through my window with the skill of a criminal. All I had to do was change out of Nightmare clothes, into my diner blouse, leave out the fire escape again, and walk through the apartment and into our front door. Say hi to Madison, say hi to Finch, hope that the makeup I put on to cover where I got hit with a pipe was enough to cover the now deep-red bruise forming over half of the side of my left cheek and temple, then sit and have a nice family meal where we didn't talk about any of our jobs.

I began with taking off my gloves and only then began to process the annoyingly large hole that even Nitara wouldn't be able to fix. The fabric was completely singed around the edges, and stuck incessantly to my skin when I tried to peel it off.

I came to terms that the black glove was garbage and yanked it off my hand as hard as I could. I still had my white ones for work, and my maroon ones for elsewhere on my dresser. I had tip money still, albeit not much, and I figured sacrificing a few days of lunch at school would be worth buying new black gloves to continue Nightmare-ing.

I pulled off my mask and hung it on the last hanger of my closet, continuing to take off the rest of my uniform. I'd buy two more sets of gloves. I wasn't going to make a habit of using trails from my hands- from what I had just learned, they were smaller, weaker, and there was no way to use them without exposing my hands, where I at least had my hair to cover the holes in the back of my shirt. And now that I had stopped using them, my hand sort of ached.

I looked closely at my palms. Compared to my right hand, which I hadn't used, the phosphorescence on the left was pulsing brighter than normal. I took the maroon gloves from my dresser, because no doubt would my left hand be visible through the white fabric of my working gloves.

I slipped them on and almost had a stroke as I looked in the mirror of my dresser. Now that my mask was off, I could see my whole face, and it wasn't pretty. Not that it was all that pretty in the first place, but radiating off the brown of my cheek was a line of red-turning-purple bruising that would be nearly impossible to hide.

I panicked and ripped open my dresser drawer. I found my work clothes, threw them on the bed, and immediately opened the top drawer where I kept my makeup. I shuffled through a bunch of near-empty cosmetics that I kept in case of emergencies, through a bunch of random eyeliner pencils, and behind my hair straightener to find my foundation.

I took a brush and immediately started to apply it, trying to ignore the painful pulse that traveled across my face when I swept over the bruise, and nearly dropped my brush when my doorhandle clicked and the door creaked open.

My heart jumped as I quickly grabbed the first article of clothing in sight, which was a cardigan that hung on my dresser. By the time that I covered myself, Finch stuck his face through the door frame, and the curiosity that was etched on his face was soon replaced with a moderate look of horror.

"Finch!" I yelped, no longer caring if I kept quiet as I kissed my plan goodbye. "Have you ever heard of knocking!"

The words hadn't all left my mouth when Finch immediately slammed the door closed. "Diana! Christ..."

I ran to my closet and grabbed a random black shirt and jeans. It didn't matter if I wore my work clothes anymore, because Finch just saw me wearing practically nothing. I resisted the urge to bang my head against the dresser and call it quits as I hurried to get dressed. My mind was such a flurry that by the time I opened the door again, I didn't even have an excuse in the back of my mind.