Chapter Text
When you live in New York, you see a lot of weird shit.
Elmo costumers crouched in an alley smoking crack, rats the size of Yorkshire terriers, masked teenagers shooting webs from their wrists. You’ve seen just about everything at this point.
That’s why when you glance up and see the silhouette of a man standing on the roof of your apartment building, you aren’t surprised. There are lots of people who hang out on the roof.
When you see him step up onto the ledge, you aren’t surprised. There are lots of photographers who are looking for that perfect bird’s-eye shot of the city.
When you see him shift his weight forward as if to jump, your heart drops, but you aren’t surprised. There are lots of suicides in New York every day.
What surprises you is his immediate reaction.
He jumps back a bit as if startled. “Oh, uh, hello down there, ma’am!” He waves with one hand while the other is cupped over his mouth like a megaphone. “You might want to move!”
You blink at his nearly cartoonish reaction. “What the fuck are you doing, man?” You shout back to him.
He falters. He fidgets in silence for a moment before calling back, “Uh, well, I-I thought it was pretty obvious?”
You bring a hand up to block the sun from your eyes. You squint, but still can’t make out his features from here. “You need to talk to someone, man. Is there anyone I can call for you?” You ask.
The man’s figure falls eerily still. “No. There’s no one. That’s kinda the point.” Comes his reply. Your heart sinks deeper in your chest.
Fuck, you think to yourself, I hope I didn’t make it worse.
“I’m sorry.” you call. “…You could talk to me.”
He laughs awkwardly, as if you’d just made a very unfunny joke. “Why would I want to talk to you?” He fiddles with his hands.
“Because beggars can’t be choosers.” You respond.
“Why would you want to talk to me?” He asks.
“Because I don’t want to see someone die? I thought that’d be pretty obvious.” You answer, parroting his words from earlier.
The man stays very still. It’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking from here, and the silence feeds your ever-growing anxiety.
After a worryingly long time, he answers. “Alright. Why not?” You let out a sigh of relief.
“I’ll be up in a second!” You promise.
“I’m not going anywhere,” the man reassures you.
You bolt through the lobby of the building and towards the stairs. Despite the man’s casual demeanor, this is still a life-or-death situation you’re dealing with. You take the steps two at a time and don’t risk losing a second by stopping at your apartment to put away your groceries. By the time you reach the roof access, you’re completely out of breath and beaded with sweat.
You hesitate with your hand hovering over the handle. Is this what I should be doing? You question, teeth worrying at your lower lip. Fuck, I should’ve just gotten the doorman to call the police. It’s too late to go back, though. He’ll think I’m not coming.
You wish right now more than ever that you’d charged your phone before you left the house that morning.
Well, there’s no going back now. You take a deep, grounding breath hj. He seems like a reasonable guy. Just get him off the roof. You can call someone to take care of him later.
You turn the handle and push.
“Hello?” You call cautiously. “Are you… still up here?”
From your left you hear his reply. “Yep. Still alive.”
You turn towards his voice and see his wide, hunched figure. You see he’s wearing the odd combination of a coat, sweatpants, and a truly stupid-looking bucket hat. He’s incredibly pale; the sunlight is all but reflecting off of the small bit of skin you can see. His head is tucked low, shoulders tense around his ears. He tugs the hat lower on his head, and you understand the intention. Whoever he is, he doesn’t want to be seen.
You set your groceries and purse near the door and take a few cautious steps forward. “Can you maybe back away from the edge a bit?”
He shakes his head. “No, I… I’m good over here.”
You stop your progression. “Alright, whatever you want.”
You stand in silence for much too long, struggling to come up with your next move. What do they do in the movies? Wait, Hollywood makes shit up all the time, I probably shouldn’t copy what they do.
Fuck, I should disclose I have no clue what I’m doing. Honesty would probably be the best policy here.
“I’ve… never talked someone off a ledge before. I don’t know what I’m doing.” You say. You can hear the nervous tension in your own voice.
“Well, I’ve never tried to kill myself before, so I guess we’re both in uncharted waters.” He replies. You let out a little nervous chuckle.
“Now that we’ve got our disclaimers out of the way, could you maybe tell me what’s up?” You ask. That’s usually the next step, right? Ask him why he’s so depressed, see if you can come up with a solution?
“I don’t think you’d get it.” He responds with such certainty you think it might be true.
You gulp down your nerves and begin to speak. “Well, this isn’t the answer. Whatever you’re going through, there are professionals who can help.”
As soon as the words leave your lips, he throws his head back in a truly cartoonish display and lets out a squawking, incredulous laugh.
You mark that as the second time you’ve been surprised today.
“Oh, there isn’t a professional on the planet that could help me!” He laughs. “There are only a handful of people who could understand, and they’re the ones who caused the whole mess to begin with.”
“Well there are still, like, healthy coping mechanisms and shit. A therapist might not be able to tackle the exact trauma you went through, but maybe they could do something about the way you’re processing it.” You say, mentally patting yourself on the back for sounding so well-informed.
He pauses and hums like he hadn’t considered that. “That’s a good point. But I don’t exactly have the money for a therapist.”
“There’s always the internet.” You’re quick to reply.
He’s even quicker to answer you with “I can’t afford internet. Or a phone bill. Or a phone.”
Your shoulders slump. “Okay, that’s an issue, but…” You scramble internally for a solution. “You could go to the library! Free internet and computers.”
“I don’t like going in public.” He replies. “The way I look, it… upsets people.” He explains, voice low.
Right, so something traumatic happened that left him disfigured. Medical debt would explain why he doesn’t have any money. There must have been some sort of accident. You’re pretty sure you’ve pieced it together.
“You don’t owe strangers comfort. If your injuries make someone upset, they can look the other damn way.” You tell him. “If we were all so worried about how we look that we didn’t leave the house, society couldn’t function.”
“Easy for you to say,” he snorts, “you’re beautiful.”
Okay, you think as your face flushes, surprise number three.
You falter for something to say, but by the time you open your mouth, he’s begun to backtrack.
“I-I mean, not in a weird way,” he flails his hands in a way you find endearing, “just in the way that is, uh, an objective statement of fact. Not to say I don’t find you attractive personally, just, from a biological standpoint, your features are… p-pleasant?”
You’re a bit flustered and a little more than a bit confused by his little ramble. “I think that was a compliment, so… thank you?” You say, and it comes out as more of a question than a statement.
Before he can put his foot in his mouth again, you circle back to your original point. “But just because I’m,” you falter, “pretty, I guess, doesn’t mean I should be treated any differently, and you shouldn’t be treated differently because of your looks, either.”
“I’m not just some ugly guy,” he replies in a tone that’s trying to be matter-of-fact but comes out more self-depricating. “Nobody’s ever seen someone who looks like me before.”
“That’s hyperbole for sure. There are lots of people with facial deformities.” You assure him.
“No, you don’t understand, it’s-” he cuts himself off with a frustrated noise. “You don’t know what I look like. If I turned around right now, you’d run screaming.”
“I’m a fuckin’ New Yorker, I can guarantee I’ve seen weirder shit.” You respond, hoping the slight offense you’re feeling isn’t apparent in your tone.
“I’m not doubting that, I’m doubting that you’re mentally prepared to see a guy with no face.”
You cringe when you imagine what could have possibly happened to destroy this poor man’s entire face.
“The noise you just made confirms my hypothesis.”
“We’re getting off track,” you say, trying to regain control of the situation, “what else do people talk about when one’s trying to stop the other from committing suicide?”
He shrugs. “I dunno. As previously established, neither of us have done this before. But I haven’t jumped yet, so I guess you’re doing a pretty good job so far.”
“Your nonchalance in this situation is almost off-putting.”
“Ah, that would be the autism.” He explains.
You slap your hand to your forehead. “Of course- oh my God, I’m so sorry-”
“No, no, it’s alright!” He assures you. “You didn’t know.”
“You’re actively suicidal, and now you’re the one comforting me.” You groan, dragging your hand down your face. “I suck at this.”
“Maybe you’re autistic, too?” He offers, shrugging again.
“You know what, that’d explain a lot.”
He chuckles, and the sound is like a soothing balm to your fried nerves.
“What’s your name?” You ask, realizing that probably should have been the first thing you asked.
“Johnathon Ohnn. What about you?”
You tell him, and he nods. “Well, it’s nice to meet you. I wish it were in better circumstances.”
He begins to move, making your heart drop to your stomach like a lead balloon. When you lunge forward and grab his arm, he lets out a choked noise of shock.
You jerk him back, and both of you tumble backwards onto the roof.
You land with an ‘oof!’ as he knocks the air out of you by landing directly on your chest.
“What was that for?!” He questions incredulously.
“I thought you were gonna jump!” You snap back, willing your heart to stop beating at a hundred miles an hour.
“Brick hurts to sit on, I was trying to get more comfortable!” He explains.
“Well you gave me a fuckin’ heart attack!” You yell, propping yourself up on your elbows. When you open your eyes, they adjust to the light quickly with his shadow blocking the sun.
His skin isn’t just pale; it’s as white as paper, with an oddly smooth, rubbery texture. You notice his chin is well-defined and handsome.
Your eyes finally trail up to take in the face of the mystery man before you, only to find-
-there’s no face to take in at all.
Where his features should be, there is only a big, shifting, vantablack spot.
Though he has no features, his facial muscles are seemingly all in the correct places, minus where the spot floats in the center of his face. This close, you can see that his eyebrow muscles are knitted together in what would be an expression of fear if he had a face.
He throws himself backwards, away from you, and scrambles to pull his hat back down over his face. His hands are covered in similar spots to the one on his face.
“Don’t- don’t look at me!” He cries, voice tight with an unplaceable emotion. Realizing it’s too late for that, he revises his demand. “Forget what you saw! I-I don’t want you to-”
“Woah…” you breathlessly cut him off.
He comes to a complete stop. “… what?”
“Sorry,” you mutter, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to- I just think you look really cool.” Your face flushes as try to explain, “When you said you didn’t have a face, I wasn’t picturing something so-”
“Disgusting?” He provides. “Freakish? Ghastly?”
“-oddly beautiful.” You finish.
In his surprise, he drops the hat he was holding over his not-face. You watch the inky spot shift and expand over his cheekbones.
“Sorry,” you apologize again, kicking yourself for blatantly romanticizing his disability. “I didn’t mean to-”
He cuts you off again. “You think I’m beautiful?” He says the word like it’s completely alien.
You nod. “You look like if Jackson Pollock and Salvador Dalí’s paintings had a kid.”
“You’re an artist.” He says with a tone of realization.
“No,” you say, then pause. “Well, yes, but not that kind of art. I mostly do character design and concept art.”
“Oh.” He nods. “I’m kind of an artist myself. I’m a scientist!” He says, voice light with pride.
You raise an eyebrow. “I thought science was, like, the opposite of art?”
“Some people think that, but they’re more alike than you’d realize! They both involve long trial-and-error processes, creativity, ignorant scorn from people outside the community… artists are scientists, and scientists are artists.”
You laugh at his apt comparison, and the spot on his cheeks widen a bit more.
“I guess you’re right.”
“Of course I am, I’m a scientist!”
You let out another peal of laughter, and you watch the muscles in his cheeks contract in a mouthless smile.
You move from your uncomfortable position into a cross-legged one. He moves as well, hugging his spindly legs up to his chest and resting his head on his knees.
This is good, you think, he’s getting more comfortable. Let’s keep on this track.
“What kind of art do you do?” You ask.
His not-smile falters. “I have three PhDs. Quantum Mechanics, Theoretical Physics, and Engineering from MIT. I used to work at Alchemax.”
Your face falls as the you make the connection. “You mean the Alchemax facility in New York?”
He nods solemnly and pulls his legs in tighter. “The very same. That’s what turned me into… this.”
“How did a generator explosion cause..?” you’re not sure what to call his condition.
“It’s okay. The news reports completely fabricated the cause of the explosion, so I wouldn’t expect you to know what happened.” The spot on his face shrinks into a small, shivering blot.
“In layman’s terms, it was a machine that opened holes to another dimension. It was dangerous, but beautiful. The universe- no, a trillion universes, all within our grasp.” His voice is reverent, as if recalling something holy.
He sighs. “I was operating the machine when Spider-Man,” he says the name with such vitriol you’re taken aback, “came in to shut it down by force. When it exploded, it did something to my DNA. I haven’t been able to get to a lab to do some proper testing, but I theorize my very cellular makeup has been altered.”
You let it all sink in for a moment.
“I am so sorry that happened to you.” You lean forward and put your hand on his knee. He leans into the comfort instinctively. “You should sue.”
He laughs again, but there’s no mirth. “That’s even funnier than your therapist suggestion. What lawyer in their right mind would take on Alchemax?”
He’s right; Alchemax’s law team is notoriously fierce. They have to be, with all the workplace incidents and faulty products they churn out. Still, the idea that this man’s life has been ruined by this soulless corporation and he won’t see a penny of compensation for it makes your blood boil.
“So you’ve not gotten any compensation?”
He shakes his head.
“What about hush money?”
He snorts. “The threatening legalese in my NDA is more than enough to keep me quiet.”
“What about a letter of recommendation?”
“Who would write it? Fisk is dead, Dr. Octavius is dead, the corporate overlords and shareholders have all quietly dropped out- not to mention, what scientific organization worth their bunsen burners would hire a faceless, homeless autistic man who has a unstable DNA and less-than-stellar history with explosions?” He sighs and buries his head in his hands. “I can’t even get a job at SubWay.
“I can’t pay rent with no job. I got an eviction notice today. I can’t stay with a friend because I’ve never really had any, and I can’t stay with family because they cut contact with me after they saw what I’ve become. I have no future, no joy, no purpose.” His voice is raspy and broken, like he might start crying if he were able. “I don’t even have the luxury of fucking crying.”
You spring forward and wrap your arms around him. “I am so sorry,” you say, your own throat constricting now, “I’m so sorry you’re going through this.”
His hands hover over your back for a moment, unsure of what to do. You blink back a tear and continue. “I could help you out somehow.”
“I can’t ask you to-”
“You’re not asking me to do anything. I’m telling you. I am not going to let you throw your life away because a piece of shit corporation ruined it with no consequences.” You pull back to look him in the face. “Are you going to give in? What about that artist’s resolve?”
His not-eyebrows furrow. “In this hypothetical situation where I listen to you, where would I stay?”
“FEAST is really well-prepared to help people in your situation.” You suggest. “Well, not your exact situation, but very similar ones. I volunteer sometimes.”
“The people at FEAST are saints, but they’re no miracle workers. I’ll have a cot to sleep in at night, sure, but what about during the day? Do you really think the PDNY will take kindly to a homeless neurodivergent man with no face loitering around?”
You grimace. You didn’t consider that.
“Face it, it’s just not logical for me to continue living. I… I don’t want to die, but what else is there for me to do?”
You have an idea, but you hesitate.
You don’t know this man, your brain tells you. He could be dangerous.
He needs help, responds your heart, and besides, you’re lonely in that little apartment all by yourself.
You chew on your lower lip as you deliberate.
He said it himself, his body could be unstable. What if something happens that causes the same kind of explosion as the one that took out Alchemax?
Or, your heart snaps back, what if he makes a scientific breakthrough with his spots and becomes the next Nikola Tesla?
And, your heart continues, don’t you think he’s kind of cute in a horror movie kind of way?
Yes, is your immediate internal response, and he seems like such a wonderful guy. I do need more friends…
“… You can stay with me.” You offer, surprised by how sure you sound.
“What? No! I-I can’t-” he begins to protest, but you shake your head.
“Yes, you can. If I left and you decided to go out there and off yourself when I could have done something, I’d be pissed.” You stand and reach down to help him up.
His face shifts between your hand, your face, and the ledge of the roof. “I don’t have any way to pay you back.”
“You’re some sort of scientific anomaly,” you shrug, “I figure if you run some tests on yourself, you can sell your research and get some of that Science Daily money. When you get it, I’ll take a cut. How’s twenty percent sound?”
“I don’t have any equipment-”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Right now, you can repay me by making us dinner. You… do eat, right?”
“I- occasionally, but not as much as a normal human,” he answers, completely baffled. “You don’t even know me. What if I was some sort of murderer or- or pervert? ”
“Then you probably would have attacked me while we were up on this unmonitored roof.” You supply.
“Why are you doing this?”
You think for a moment.
“I’m not really sure.” Comes your honest reply. “I guess that, as a scientist, I have a hypothesis that you’re worth the effort.”
He looks up at your face, his nonexistent eyebrows knitting. You give him the brightest, kindest smile you can summon, and the blot on his face once again shifts over his cheekbones.
His overly-large hand grazes your smaller one. “Then I guess that makes us lab partners.” He says, then grasps your hand in his.
You give his hand a firm shake, then haul him to his feet. “Come on then, partner. We can learn more about one another while you make me dinner.”