On Wednesday, Peter subscribes to MJ's substack.
It's a stupid thing to do. Rent is due next week, and he really can't pay it late this time — not with a credit score that's only four years old, sinking every time he can't make minimum payments on his card. The only credit card he could get at seventeen, after the bank with his old youth checking account forgot he existed.
The substack is six dollars a month. Six dollars that could pay for groceries, laundry, toilet paper. Six dollars he doesn't fucking have.
Peter almost subscribed last Tuesday, when he'd first stumbled onto one of her articles. He'd read the same three paragraphs above the paywall over and over, memorizing the phrasing, trying to picture it in her voice. The writing style felt familiar, like long-gone days of proof-reading each other's english essays, but more advanced. She'd grown as a writer, since going to college. Peter's throat had felt thick with it.
Eight days of reading every free to the public musing about friendship, about academia post-Blip, about the place of art in the sciences, about politics and Boston and everything Peter can get his hands on. Eight days of telling himself that he shouldn't.
Eight days of knowing he was always going to give in, eventually.
On Thursday, it becomes a new part of his usual routine. He swings over to Brooklyn, lets his feet dangle off a warehouse roof and gives himself thirty minutes to scroll through the lives of everyone he used to know. Ned first, both his main instagram account with club posters and party videos and his linked alternate account full of Lego robotics projects. Then, check his tagged posts to see if there's anything Peter missed since yesterday. MJ's substack next. Flash tends to move with his own crowd these days, but Peter checks his socials too. He almost always ends up in his voicemail box, staring up at the night sky as Aunt May's voice tells him to grab milk on the way home from school. It echoes in his ears.
He closes his eyes, quiets the ringing, imagines feeling the breeze on his face. It's a gorgeous night, summer turning to fall, humid heat finally burning away. The rushing winds used to be his favorite part about swinging through the city.
But Peter doesn't let himself take off his mask anymore, not even up to his nose. There's always a phone somewhere, a livestream, a tourist photo. The NYPD almost certainly has traffic cameras scanning to identify him with facial recognition software. The mask is the only thing he has left — his shield, his protection, his sunk cost fallacy.
He doesn't like to think about the part of his life that doesn't involve the mask.
So he thinks about everybody else's lives, for exactly thirty minutes, until the everpresent pit in his stomach has gone cold and brittle. And then he powers off his phone, holds down on the button until the cracked screen blacks out completely, and gets to work.
stormborns
blakekathryn
snowghoul
2087
pixelskylines
titsay
amandla
germansingergirl
gracieabrams
yousharknotpass
