demetra

The neon green numbers on your alarm clock glow 2:03 am. You really should be asleep since you have a massive calculus exam tomorrow, but you're slumped over your desk, desperately trying to memorize formulas. Your headphones are blasted, a chill lo-fi beat playing to keep your brain alive.

Right in the middle of a song, a heavy, dull thud hits your window screen. it sounds like a wet sandbag slammed into the glass.

"What the heck was that?.." You mutter, pulling your headphones down around your neck as you get up to open the window and check what caused the sound. 

You're expecting a bird or some cruel prank, definitely not what you saw, which is a soaked figure in a torn up black-and-red suit collapsing onto your sill. 

Before you have time to process the fact that Spiderman is bleeding on your school dorm windowsill, he groans, pulls his mask up past his nose to breathe, and you instantly recognize your quiet classmate, Miles.

It seems he's too exhausted to climb up to his dorm room.

"Please don't call the cops... or my parents" He mutters quietly.

"Of course not" You immediately answer out of instinct.

You reach out and grab his shoulders, pulling him inside. He's deceptively heavy, his muscles dense, and you stumble back a bit under his weight.

"Jeez, what happened?" You ask, trying to steady him.

Miles just groans in reply, his head rolling back as he lets out a weak sigh.

You guide him over and put him right on your bed. The expensive, light-colored blanket your mom bought you for college is immediately soaked with murky rain water and a smear of dark blood, but you find yourself not really caring anymore. Right now, your classmate is hurt.

"Stay here," you say softly, pressing a gentle hand to his uninjured shoulder to keep him anchored.

Miles nods weakly, his eyes already fluttering shut as his head hits your pillow.

You rush into your tiny en-suite bathroom, tearing through your cabinets. You grab a pack of antiseptic wipes, a bottle of saline, and a handful of the biggest bandaids you can find.

When you come back into the bedroom, he looks completely ready to fall asleep right then and there. His eyes are closed and his breathing is shallow.

"Hey, stay awake for just a second," you murmur, kneeling on the mattress beside him. "I have to clean you up first."

You gently start wiping the blood and rain from his forehead. Miles winces, his brow furrowing as the antiseptic stings his skin. He opens his eyes just a crack, looking at you with a mixture of gratitude and intense embarrassment.

"M'sorry," he mumbles. "Ruining your carpet... your bed... I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing, Miles. Just breathe," You whisper, wiping away a streak of grime from his cheek.

You move down to his shoulder where the black fabric of the suit is badly shredded, exposing a nasty, jagged scratch that's still oozing blood. You carefully clean the edges and press a large bandaid firmly over the wound.

Once the bleeding stops, he looks good to go. You try to nudge him to stay on the bed or at least move to the small futon couch across the room, but he stubbornly shakes his head. 

He slides off the mattress and slumps onto the floor, propping his back against the side of your bed. He didn't wanna walk over to your couch; he's just too dead to the world.

Within seconds, his chin drops to his chest, his breathing deepening into a heavy sleep. You stare at him for a moment, marveling at how the city's biggest hero looks so small sleeping on your cheap dorm rug. You pull your extra comforter off the desk chair and gently drape it over his shoulders.

You wake up the next morning to find your window open, a breeze blowing the curtains, and a tiny, hand-written sticky note on your desk that reads: 

"thank you IOU big time. pls don't tell anybody my identity -m"

You smile, a soft chuckle escaping your lips as you peel the note off the paper. You walk over to the open frame and look out the window, shielding your eyes from the sun.

Far off in the distance, between the tall brick buildings of brooklyn, you can see a tiny black-and-red figure swinging effortlessly through the city skyline, catching the morning light like he always does.

You and Miles were in his dorm room to study, like you’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks. He was reading out some notecards, quizzing you on AP physics. “What's the formula for linear momentum?” He mumbled

You thought for a bit, the answer slipping your mind. Miles was zoned out, like he was either thinking about a lot of things or nothing at all. you finally remembered the answer to the question, but when you said it, he didn’t reply, he just blinked slowly and let out a massive yawn. Needing to read your notes, you turned around and reached for your tote bag. When you grabbed your notebook and turned to face Miles, his head was down on the desk, sleeping. His sketchbook was open below him, and you didn’t want the pages to get crumpled, so you slid it out from under his head, careful to not wake him up.

As you lifted the cover to close the sketchbook, your eyes caught the page behind the empty one it was left on. You froze. It was a drawing of you. The sketch was gorgeous, and every detail was drawn on perfectly, from your hair to the outfit you wore to class just yesterday.

A soft shift in weight beside you made you look up. Miles stirred, rubbing his eyes with a paint-stained thumb as he blinked up at you, completely bleary-eyed. He looked at you, then down at the open book in your hands, and the residual sleep instantly vanished from his face.

"Hey," Miles croaked, his voice cracking slightly from sleep as he scrambled to sit up straight. He yanked his hand back, knocking over a stray pencil that rolled across the desk. "Uh, sorry. I didn't mean to pass out on you like that.”

You didn't move, your thumbs still resting on the edges of the open sketchbook.

Miles followed your gaze down to the page. His eyes went wide, and he completely froze, his jaw dropping open a little bit. He made a desperate, clumsy grab for the book, his fingers slipping on the smooth paper.

"Wait, no, that's just, um," He stammered, pulling the book closer to his chest and shutting it tight. He rubbed the back of his neck and looked everywhere in the room except at you, his chest heaving like he just finished a sprint. "I was just messing around with some shading techniques. it's not— I mean, you just look really nice when you're focused, you know? Please don't think i'm a creep."

“It's really good,” you said as you looked up from the sketch to his flustered face.

He looked surprised at your reaction, the wince leaving his face. “Wait, really? You're not mad?” He asked, his voice dropping into a quieter, softer tone. He let out a long breath, his shoulders dropping as the panic left his body. “I was so stressed you'd think it was weird. I just, I don't know. Every time i try to practice drawing portraits, my mind just goes straight to you.”

He looked down at the cover of the sketchbook, his thumb tracing the edge of the cardboard before he looked back up at you through his eyelashes. A small, shy smile finally cracked on his face.

“I can show you the other ones I did of you if you want,” he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper.

“There's more?” You ask.

Miles bit his inside lip, his eyes darting toward the floor for a second before he looked back up at you. He slowly opened the sketchbook again, his fingers carefully turning back a few pages.

"Yeah, kind of a lot," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand.

He turned the book toward you, revealing a page filled with smaller, messy graphite sketches. There was one of you laughing during lunch, another of you sleeping on the subway with your head against the window, and a detailed close-up of your hands holding a coffee cup. They were all drawn with so much care, capturing little moments you didn't even realize he was watching.

"I just start drawing, and my hands sort of do it on their own," Miles said softly, his voice full of nerves as he watched your face for a reaction. "Is it too much?"