Moon Boy ▷ Flash Thompson

6 - SUMMER ROUTINE

THERE WAS A BRIEF SECOND, EVERY TIME HE WOKE UP, THAT FLASH FORGOT EVERYTHING. A brief, fleeting moment where his entire life was forgotten and all that remained was a person who didn't have the life he led, didn't make the mistakes that he was trying so hard to work on—he was still a kid, changing wasn't going to happen in a few months, no matter how hard he had tried. But the moment would pass as quickly as it came and the weight of all that he had experienced would come crashing down and he'd be left with an aching pit of rage in his chest, never leaving, no matter how much he tried; no matter how happy he was, there was always that resentment in his heart; whom it was for, he wasn't quite sure.

He sighed, glancing towards the clock; it was the first night since the beginning of summer that he had actually gotten a good night's sleep. Every night he was tossing and turning, checking his phone to see if he was getting a Skype call or a text message, listening to music and trying and failing to study.

He sighed as he climbed from the bed, looking around the room. His eyes landed on a photo on the dresser and he walked towards it, picking it up and looking at it. It was him at the last birthday party he'd enjoyed—all the others he'd had were sorry excuses of cover ups to make sure parents didn't look down at his father for not indulging his son—an arm slung around a girl the same age as him, the two grinning madly at the camera. He was still young and had just lost a tooth after the girl had knocked it out in the bounce house.

Diana Smith. Their mothers had been childhood friends, sticking close together all their lives, bringing their children together as a result; they even had their first borns a mere week apart, Diana first, then Flash. After Diana's parents died during The Incident, she had been placed in the care of Flash's family, her godfamily, as, as far as they knew, she had no other extended family to go live with.

Flash loved Diana. He loved her with his entire being and she loved him, even when he was completely awful—and she had pointed it out to him many times as they grew up when she realized that he actually cared about her opinion—and even when all she wanted to do was stay in her room for weeks on end by herself, she still cared about him; very few people could say that truthfully.

Of course, karma came back to bite him, and she left. Her extended family finally got a hold of her after all this time and wanted to reconnect, and as much as Flash hated them—most of them—as much as he wanted to be selfish and keep her to himself, he knew he couldn't. Her parents had died and her aunt—her real aunt, not Flash's mother—looked so much like her mother, she couldn't say no to their offer of staying with them for the summer.

Severely depressed for years, she wanted to see if this would help her; Flash didn't think it would, but convincing her to realize it wouldn't was as effective as all the times she told him to stop being so angry with everyone.

So she left him behind, going off to London and spending time with her extended family. Her aunt seemed nice, as did her younger cousin, though the same couldn't be said for the rest of the family. Flash kept track of all of them in his mind, labelling and categorizing, feeding into the pit of anger in his chest that flared whenever he thought of them, his hands curling into fists.

He just wanted her back. They talked constantly, but it wasn't the same. He had worked so hard to change for her, he had thrown himself into his studies, tried to make himself more like her boyfriend, the perfect Peter Parker whose existence had been a point of tension between him and his own father—"that Parker boy's got a good brain on his shoulders, you'll be working for him some day"—but she didn't stay. He still wasn't good enough.

He ripped his gaze away from the photo, turning back to the bed he had slept in. He had moved to her room in the middle of the night, desperately wanting to sleep. He had slid under the covers and knocked out within seconds, and he had to wonder if this was healthy.