After Peter'd showered and they'd patched themselves up as best they could, Katya showed him the Widow's Gauntlet like she'd promised.
"It's got a grappling hook that comes from here-" she pointed to the exit port, "And then these-" she ran her finger around the rim of it, "Can deliver electric shocks and short energy blasts to varying degrees. I can just shock someone, or knock them out cold, or, if I aim right,..." she trailed off, and shrugged. "Kill them."
She let Peter take the piece of tech from her hands. "This is so cool though! It's like webs without the sticking."
"So not as cool as yours."
Peter smirked. "No, not as cool as mine, but still." his smirk spread into a smile. "You're kind of like a spider too."
"That's literally the whole point." Katya said flatly, the Stark monotone shining through her voice again, "I don't like to use the word Widow, because I'm not anymore, but Myshka is still technically from Mouse Spider. Mysh is mouse."
Peter handed the gauntlet back and sat back a bit. "You never told me what pauchok means, by the way. Have you been calling me dumbass this entire time?"
Katya giggled. "No, that's durak. Or if it's a girl, dura."
"So what's Pauchok?"
"Well pauk means Spider. Pauchok is like a…" she searched for the word on the carpet for a moment before she found it. "Diminutive? Like, an affectionate way of saying spider, like what you'd call a friend. Kind of like "my little spider" but without sounding so maternal. Same as the -ka on Myshka."
Peter half-scowled, but was clearly not serious about it. "I"m not a little spider. I'm Spiderman."
"That would be chelovek-pauk." Katya scrunched up her nose. "Not quite the same ring to it."
Peter grimaced as well. "Yeah, no. I like pauchok better."
A comfortable silence made its way between them from their places cross legged on Peter's floor, and briefly stretched.
Katya turned the gauntlet over in her hands. "You know, I never thought I'd wear this again."
"Then why did you?"
Katya gave a ghost of a shrug. "I'm not sure. Something just felt…off, I guess, when I was getting ready for Homecoming, and I'd been going through my room anyway to pack up." She hated to say it, but when she'd put it on a wave of a weird type of safety she could only describe as nostalgia hit her, almost like she'd pulled out a baby blanket. It was the only physical thing she had left of her old life, and she'd spent months planning on disposing of it somehow. But now…she was glad she hadn't. "And I had this stashed in my closet so I just…put it on. Wearing the dress felt weird enough on its own," she snickered, "This actually made it feel a little less weird."
"You looked really pretty, by the way." Peter kept his tone casual as he picked at his carpet, but the pink tinge to his cheeks was unmistakable, even in the near darkness they were sitting in.
Katya laughed. "Before or after I split my head open?"
"Before," Peter laughed, but paused, as if considering. "But after, too."
Katya felt her face flush but she combatted it by rolling her eyes, kicking at his foot with her own. "Well thank you. And you looked very handsome for the fifteen seconds you had your suit on."
They both laughed. "It was an emergency, okay? I barely had time to explain to Liz-" Peter's face fell. "Oh shit. Liz."
Katya raised an eyebrow, running her thumb along the smooth edges of Widow's gauntlet, waiting for a follow up. When there was none, she prompted, "What about Liz?"
Peter ran his hand down his face, sighing. "I just left her there, at the dance. I'd even practiced with May and everything, but when I figured out what the Vulture was up to-"
"-you didn't have a choice. Spiderman had things to do."
"-And it's not like I could explain why I was leaving," he continued, his face now fully in his hands. "What, "be right back, gotta get your father arrested, but I'll be back in time for the slow dance?'"
Katya raised an eyebrow. "Well at least he's still alive, so she's not mourning the loss of both her father and what I"m sure are your impeccable dance skills."
This got a chuckle out of Peter from behind his hands, which he then dropped from his face. "Hey, I can dance." His tone was defensive. "May said I had it down."
Katya grinned to herself at the mental image of Peter's aunt trying to teach him how to 'casually dance' in their apartment's living room. "Would've loved to see that."
"Well you'll just have to go to the next school dance with me." He said it like it was a challenge.
There was more than one? How often did schools throw parties? "Fine, I will." she butted back. "How often are these things, anyway? I thought school was for like…learning."
Peter laughed. "It is, but they do a bunch of social stuff too. There's usually a dance around christmas called like Snowball or Winter Wonderland or whatever secular name they can come up with that year, which is kind of like Homecoming, and then in the spring there's Prom, which is usually for upperclassmen and a much bigger deal. And sports are usually a big deal in schools, too, but ours is geared more towards academics. It's called Midtown Highschool of Science and Technology after all." The faint pink glow of the just-rising sun lit his smirk up from the side.
Oh shit.
Peter registered the sudden widening in her eyes and got the message. "Did Mr. Stark expect you home at any specific time?"
Katya shook her head, "with all the chaos of the moving and all, we never got around to that part. I don't even think he saw me leave." And now all of her shit had been moved upstate and it was a long drive to get there, as far as she knew. She could always call Happy to take her, but, "When does your Aunt usually wake up?" She asked, lowering her voice.
Peter's eyes widened as the implications locked into place in his head. "I don't know, but it's usually pretty early. I think she works today."
As if on cue, the gurgle of percolating coffee sprung to life in the kitchen. They both dove for the bed, Katya to underneath the bottom bunk and Peter leaping up to the top, tossing covers over himself.
Shit, her boots and destroyed dress were out in the open- wiggling herself towards the edge, she managed to grab the scrap of fabric and tug it towards her, shoving it behind her against the wall, and her finger's barely grazed the tips of her boots as the percolating stopped. Quick as a blink she lunged out for them, gathered them to herself, and then settled back under the bed.
Their haste was apparently not necessary, as it took Peter's Aunt another fistful of minutes or so to peek into the room.
"Peter?" She called. He groaned in a convincingly sleepy-sounding response.
"Mm?"
"I didn't hear you come in last night- did you have a good time?"
Peter groaned again, and Katya could feel him shifting in the bed above her. "Hm? Yeah, it was really nice. She liked the corsage."
Katya couldn't see May's face but she could practically hear her self-satisfied grin. "I knew it, carnations are always a hit."
"Mngh, yeah, thanks Aunt May."
There was a pause, but Katya couldn't see what was going on. The next voice she heard was Aunt May's again.
"So I've got to get going for my shift, but, late lunch? You, me, thai? I want to hear all about it."
"Sure, sounds good."
The door closed after a beat, and Katya could hear footsteps walking away, but she didn't move for at least another count of thirty.
"Now what?" She whispered, shifting so the heel of her boot wasn't directly digging into her bicep anymore. She saw Peter's feet land on the ground in front of her, soon to be joined by his head.
"Oh hey there," He said playfully, before straightening up. He was moving about the room, grabbing a pair of pants from his closet. "Now, you go to the top bunk and snuggle deep under the covers in case May comes back and I'll-" he was slipping shoes on now, and walking towards his window. "Be right back."
— —- —
If Katya had to guess, it took Peter somewhere between five minutes and half an hour to get back, but she couldn't be sure because she'd actually ended up falling asleep- but it was brief enough that she hadn't realized she'd been asleep until she woke up to his jostling her shoulder. "C'mon, I got you pants and breakfast."
…What?
Katya sat up, scrubbing the sleep out of her eyes, and came face to face with Peter, holding a pair of black leggings in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other. "Where did you find pants?"
He dropped a pair of black leggings on her lap and leapt down the bunk bed's ladder he'd been halfway up on. "Bodega's sell everything."
