"-It's amazing," Katya had clearly taken a page out of Ned's book on how to gush about something, as she hadn't stopped all morning about her new suit. "And it's even got a holder for my butterfly knife, and he programmed the gauntlent directly into it-"

Peter didn't know whether he should say so, but the fact that her suit sounded so protective flooded his body with relief. Even though he'd watched the drone's feed for the rest of the night- and rewound the footage from when he'd fallen asleep, the entire time which Aneszka had been sleeping too, so, nothing to miss there- and nothing even remotely concerning had happened, he knew Katya, and he knew the legacy of Black Widow, and of course the concept of her running into something like that had terrified him. But he wanted to be supportive, so he'd never voiced it. Plus, it wasn't like he was going to leave her side for a single step of the way.

She was also adorable when she gushed.

The tracker beeped, interrupting Peter's thoughts, and Katya glanced down at it. "She's headed for the subway again- you've got your hood in your backpack, right?"

"Only always." Peter sent her a smug grin. The plan was that he'd take it out occasionally, when he went to the bathroom and such during class, to check on the feed, just in case.

Ned found them through the throng of students heading off to lunch, then, coming up on Peter's side and clasping him on the shoulder. "How's Opera-"

"Tch!" Katya cut him off sharply. He paused, before realizing his mistake.

"Oh, so, " this time he forced his tone to be much more casual, "how's the government homework going?"

"Pretty good so far," Peter told him, as the three dodged a group of upperclassmen weaving their way through the halls, "We got a lot of, erm, information last night, but it wasn't very exciting-"

"Which is good news," Katya leaned over Peter so she could direct the comment towards Ned as they walked, "But we're still …researching."

Ned nodded along. "All good, all good….have you guys figured out which part you want me to do yet?"

Katya shook her head, but Peter answered, "Not yet, we're still setting up the slides. I'll send you the GoogleDoc as soon as we've finished though." See? This talking in code thing was easy.

Not that anyone was listening to them. Aside from the normal chaos in the halls before lunch, Betty Brandt and another girl were busy trying to hang up a banner across the hallway, an advertisement for-

"The Winter Snowball," Katya read aloud as they walked underneath it. It took her a moment to register, but then she turned to Peter, "Oh, it's that other dance you were talking about!"

Ned's face lit up. "Oh, did you already-Ouch!" Peter'd elbowed him in the ribs.

"Tell her about it's existence?" He stressed to his friend, hoping he got the message. "Yes, I did." It had been getting noticeably colder outside, and the days had begun shortening a while ago, but Peter could hardly believe it was already well into December.

Thankfully it seemed like Ned got the message, because his eyes widened in understanding and he nodded along. "Yeah, it'll be fun."

"And this time we can actually go," Katya joked, as they entered the crowded cafeteria. "Peter promised me that he'd dance if we went."

Peter backtracked to the conversation she was referring to and realized with a pang that he'd technically already asked her to it, in their own, casual way, and she'd already agreed. He wondered if she'd realized what she'd been agreeing to- he did want to ask her, of course, although it was essentially a given, but he wanted to do it properly."Of course I'm going to dance. But you have to, too." he said, teasing, "And Ned will too, right Ned?"

"I'm a gift to the dance floor."

"You know," Katya said as they sat down at the nearest clear edge of a table, "I actually don't know how to just casually dance. We were trained in ballet for years, but I've seen a lot of movies, and I know it's not the same."

"What?!" Ned was incredulous, "You can't dance?"

Peter laughed, and, in a teasing, sing-song voice, added, "Katya can't da-ance"

Ned joined in "Katya can't da-ance."

Katya reddened as she unboxed her lunch, which she always brought in what Peter found to be such a cute little green thing, with golden flower insignias around it. It opened up into different compartments- Peter knew there was a name for it, but it escaped him, it was something asian- which she filled with different foods. Today it contained some sort of pasta, some salad, blueberries, and angry children, which is what Katya had insisted upon calling Sour Patch Kids since the first day he'd introduced them to her, and was now apparently at fault for her mild obsession with. "If you don't count ballet, the closest I can come to is capoeira."

"Cappa-what?" Ned had since torn open his own bagged lunch.

"Capoeira. It's a Brazilian martial art…it's kind of like violent breakdancing."

Peter laughed. He vaguely knew what it was , but he liked that description better.

Katya's wrist beeped suddenly, and she dropped her hand into her lap to quickly check the tracker. "She's moving." she muttered, her brows furrowing. She turned to root through her school bag on the seat next to her, grabbing one of her notebooks and flipping frantically to a page that was already filled with meticulous timestamps. "She didn't do this yesterday…"

Peter took that as his cue to quickly grab his hood from his backpack, shove it into the pocket of his hoodie and run to the nearest men's room, where he went into a stall and slipped it on. On the footage itself, the drone was showing that Aneszka was getting up from the desk she'd spent the morning in, putting on her coat, and walking out of the office. The drone followed her down the hall of the office, into the lobby, and out onto the streets of New York.

Peter's phone buzzed in his pocket, a text message from Katya: She's leaving the office?!

Peter quickly typed back, Maybe she's just going to lunch.

Peter waited in the bathroom, watching the surveillance, until the woman entered a nearby deli and got in line to order. Comfortable enough with what he was seeing, he tore the hood off and shoved it back into his sweatshirt before rejoining his friends in the lunchroom. Katya was scribbling down something- probably the address of the deli and a time stamp- into her notebook, which she closed, but didn't put away.

Katya glanced at Peter with some concern, but just shrugged back at her. "It all looked normal."

There was a beat.

"So…" Ned began, "Phantom Menace this afternoon?"