It was dark when Aunt May pulled up to the Toomes' house, and parked cars already lined the streets of the neighborhood.
"Oh, I remember my first party in the suburbs," she said fondly, "Kinda jealous."
Ned jumped up from his spot in the backseat, jostling Katya against the window. Peter could feel her measured stare on the back of his head, as if boring laser beams into his brain.
"It'll be a night to remember" Ned gushed.
"I gotta say Ned, some hats wear men, but you wear that hat." Aunt May glanced at him from the rearview mirror. Katya snorted.
"Yeah, it gives me confidence." Ned smiled, adjusting it a bit.
Peter could swear there were at least indentations in the back of his skull by now. "This is a mistake." he said suddenly, turning back to Aunt May, "Hey, let's just go home."
"Oh, Peter, I know," Aunt May said, her tone less serious than her words, "I know, I know it's hard, with all the changes your body is going through-"
Peter knew she was messing around but heat flooded his face regardless.
"-It's flowering now-"
Peter managed a sarcastic laugh, before Aunt May turned to Ned and Katya in the back. "He's been so stressed out lately."
"And you know what helps with stress?" Ned asked brightly. Peter swore he could have heard Katya mutter vodka under her breath, but Ned's voice drowned her out. "Parties!" He began to clamber out of the car.
"All right, all right-" Peter made to follow the others, but his Aunt called him back.
"Peter-have fun, okay?"
Have fun being the most awkward kid in the room? Have fun risking his identity being revealed just so he could get Liz's attention? It had all sounded like such a good idea at first, but now he wasn't sure, and the opposing messages he was getting from Ned and Katya weren't helping. He nodded to his Aunt. "I will."
He caught up to Ned and Katya who were waiting for him on the lawn. Or, Ned was- Katya was watching the house, which had wide windows you could see almost everyone through, doing normal party things- dancing, talking, being rambunctious, teenager stuff- with slightly narrowed eyes. She was doing that calculating thing again.
'Yo, you got the suit, right?" Ned's voice was at least slightly hushed as the trio began to walk up the lawn. Peter pulled up the sleeve of his flannel to reveal the suit's sleeve underneath, allowing himself to grin with the excitement Ned and the music from the house was radiating before being swiftly backhanded on the shoulder. Katya sent him A Look, but said nothing. Whatever. He was the one who had had to explain to her how high school parties worked in the first place.
The music got exponentially louder as they opened the double doors to the house, revealing Flash as DJ and the halls filled with people. Peter'd seen enough movies to know how this was supposed to go, and he could definitely do it. Hang out, mingle- no problem.
Next to him, Katya was still scanning the place, looking uneasy. She flinched every time Flash used the foghorn effect from the DJ booth. Peter put a hand on her shoulder, feeling it tense beneath his touch momentarily, but before he could ask what was wrong Liz came down the hallway.
"Oh my gosh! Hey guys!" She wore a flowing blue blouse and had a red solo cup in her hands. "Cool hat Ned."
Ned grinned.
"Well there's pizza, and drinks," she continued, "Help yourself."
Peter's brain had gone a little fuzzy, the way it always did when she smiled. And she was smiling. At him."W-what a great party." he managed out.
"Aw, thanks-" She was cut off by a holler in a different room and the sound of something clattering. Her eyes widened. "I gotta go-my parents will kill me if anyone breaks anything."
Peter nodded. "Yeah, yeah, you go…." She'd been happy to see him. Him. At least, it seemed that way. Maybe he could just play this by ear.
Ned grabbed his shoulder "What're you doing, man? She's here, Spider it up!"
Peter shrugged, turning towards him. On Ned's other side, Katya's eyes looked distant, fixed on a point in space somewhere in front of her but not exactly seeing it. She flinched once more at the foghorn noise.
"I don't know man,"He answered Ned, eyes still on Katya. "I think I'm just going to try, y'know….being myself."
Ned looked at him with pity. "Oh, Peter." He patted him on the shoulder. "No one wants that."
"Dude."
As if on cue, Flash spoke into the microphone. "Oh hey, it's Penis Parker!" He called, to some audible support from the audience. "Where's your buddy Spiderman? Is he in Canada with your imaginary girlfriend?" Laughter splattered across the room, and Flash deployed the foghorn noise twice for punctuation. Something moved in the corner of Peter's vision but he could hardly tell,as it was beginning to tunnel. Heat flooded his face and hands and he squeezed a fist before releasing it. Flash had been picking on him since Freshman year, this was nothing new-
"That's not Spiderman!" Flash continued, "That's Ned in a red shirt!" More laughter.
Screw it.
– – —
"Hey, it's me" he mumbled under his breath as he glanced around to make sure no one was watching- and no one was- before sticking a web to the scaffolding of the roof of the neighbor's house and slinging himself up top. He began to strip his outer clothes. "Spiderman here, where's my buddy Peter? He's gotta be here somewhere-" he kicked off his jeans, "Oh, hey Liz, Peter's told me a lot about you-"
"What, are you practicing?"
Peter whirled around at the voice and saw Katya perched on the other end of the roof, arms wrapped around the knees she'd pulled to her chest. She was picking at the rubber edging of her boots.
"What? No, I-"
He could tell by the rise and fall of her shoulders that she sighed, but it was too quiet to hear. "Spiderman's not a party trick," she reminded him, for the billionth time that day.
"I know, I"m not-"
"Then what are you doing up here?"
I could ask you the same thing Peter thought, but bit back from voicing it. He realized the motion he'd seen must have been Katya leaving the party. Between the flinches and that weird stare he'd seen, there was clearly something up. "Are you okay?"
"I"m fine." She all but snapped, and stood. She glanced down at Peter's discarded clothes in frustration, though Peter wasn't sure the frustration was purely aimed at him. "Are you really going to do this?"
"I don't know, I-"
Over her shoulder, Peter saw a bright flash of blue light, accompanied by a low boom, somewhere between a car backfiring and an explosion. The music of the party was loud enough that apparently no one else noticed, but Katya whirled around.
"What was that?" She asked, her voice tense.
Peter furrowed his brow and pulled on his suit's hood. "Not sure, but I'm going to find out."
He flung himself into action, running across the rest of the roof and webbing himself to the nearest telephone made his way down most of the street that way, before coming across a vast, open, grassy space- a park, probably. He shot a web into the darkness, but didn't feel it catch anything. "Crap."
"Yeah, now you gotta run like the rest of us." Katya's voice came up behind him- he had no clue how she'd caught up with him so quickly- before sprinting past, still in the direction of the blue explosion they'd seen. He followed her on foot, closing the space somewhat, grumbling to himself.
They managed to deplete the distance between themselves and where they were apparently heading quickly enough, as every so often the same area would emit another blue mushroom cloud. They neared a deserted bridge, that arced over a wooded area with clearing enough for a van and a car but enough nearby trees to show it hadn't been cared for in some time.
"Man, I wanted something low-key, why you trying to upsell me man?" a voice asked from the other side of the bridge where the cars were parked. Katya glanced at Peter and nodded, and he webbed himself upwards whilst she began to scale the side of the bridge.
"Okay, okay, okay." said another voice, "I got a lot of great stuff in here."
They'd both reached the top by then, and Katya dropped low to her belly, army crawling to the edge as Peter crept over as well. Below them lay the car, three men, and the van, who's back barn doors were splayed open, piled high with glowing weapon tech. One of the men- the second voice they'd heard- started listing off to the guy nearest him what he had. "We've got black hole grenades, anti-grav climbers-"
"You have climbers?" The first voice they heard, clearly a buyer, grew closer to the back of the van.
"This must be where those ATM robbers got their tech," Peter whispered to Katya, who nodded, eyes glued to the scene below them.
Suddenly a loud yodeling rang out from Peter's pocket. Katya glanced over at him only long enough to glare, and Peter winced. Why hadn't he silenced his phone?
All three men turned on eachother then, pulling out handguns. "What was that?" asked one.
"Did you set us up?" asked the other. It was clearly the two burlier guys against a smaller one, who was also armed.
Peter slid his phone out of his pocket to see that Ned was calling, and he silenced it. Of all the times-
The two burlier guys began to close in on the third, and without thinking Peter dropped down from their hiding spot. "Hey, guys, if you're going to shoot at anyone, shoot at me!"
There was a beat as what he said seemed to register with everyone before one of the burlier guys- these two were clearly the sellers- shrugged and said 'Okay."
Before he could do so, though, two things happened very quickly. First, Peter shot a web at the gun and snapped it back to him, ripping it from the guy's grasp. Second, Katya dropped down like a hawk and landed on the second man's shoulders, wrapping her legs around his neck and pulling backwards. She brought him tumbling down with her, though from her position she managed to recover immediately with a backwards somersault into standing position.
The man she'd taken down was wearing some sort of gauntlet that looked almost like an enormous taser, which, once he'd clambered up from the ground, he shot forward to use on Peter, who was running towards the man whose gun he stole. The gauntlet struck Peter's body and it immediately seized, engulfed by electricity that sent him flying backwards. By the time he'd recovered, the van with the weapons was already starting to drive away. Katya took a flying leap and managed to grab onto the top of one of the barn doors before hauling herself onto the roof of the car itself. Peter ran after it, shooting a web forward to do the same, but the door hit a mailbox in the driver's haste and came flying off.
"Oh, come on!" Peter heaved, watching the van speed away with Katya on the roof. "Guess I"m gonna have to take a shortcut. "
The shortcut consisted of sprinting through numerous people's backyards, not all of which were unoccupied. He passed a guy with a barbecue-
"-Smells good!"
-a yard with a dog-
"Sorry, buddy, I can't play right now, I've got bad guys to catch-"
- some sort of backyard party -
"Looks fun guys!"
-and two little girls having a sleepover in a camping tent, who screamed when they saw him.
After a few more yards and, thankfully, telephone poles he could swing from, he spotted the van again, Katya pressed low to the top. He wasn't sure if she had a plan- he sure as hell didn't- but he knew they'd figure it out. Hopefully the van was headed back to wherever they housed their supplies.
"Surprise!" He yelled, as if the drivers could hear him, as he took a flying leap towards the van. The only person he managed to displace though was Katya, who looked up at him with wide eyes before rolling herself off the van entirely- what?
Suddenly, Peter was grabbed around the middle by something strong and metallic and lifted into the air. By what he could gather through squirms and cranes of his neck,it was some sort of giant, mechanical bird-only it had a mask over what was clearly a human face,with glowing green eyes. That must've been what she saw- but now he was being pulled away, higher and higher into the air, and no amount of straining was budging the metal claw from his waist. They continued to rise, the entire suburb below them getting smaller, until they were high enough that he could even see a nearby lake. And then the Winged Man just…dropped him.
Peter screamed, his suit deploying a parachute, but he'd gotten turned around too quickly and instead of unfurling he got tangled up in it, hurtling towards the water. Was this really it? This was how Spiderman was going to go? Tangled in a gaggle of ropes and canvas?
He hit the water, hard, but it felt more like concrete than any sort of liquid. He could feel himself sinking, he didn't know which way was up, and his vision was beginning to tunnel…
A pair of strong, metal somethings- hands- grabbed him by the shoulders, just as his vision was beginning to black out completely, and hauled him out of the water. It took him until they'd already cleared the river and were flying over nearby trees to orient himself. It was Mr. Stark, in his Iron Man suit. "Oh," he offered breathlessly, "Hey."
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