Eva had been shot. She had been kidnapped. She had seen Black Widow before her morning coffee. At this point, reason should have dictated that she wouldn't be scared of anything. But no. Here she was, alone in the closed coffee shop, brandishing a mop at the top left corner of the window.
"Leave!" she yelled. "We're closed! Go away! Bog off!"
The spider blinked at her: it was big enough for Eva to see all eight eyes. Then it moved slightly further into the glass, away from the door and closer to her. Eva screamed.
It would be so much easier if she could kill it – just one shoe, flung from the other side of the room, and it would all be over. But then she would have to deal with a dead spider and that was, if possible, even worse. Its unholy amount of legs, all curled up and sticking in the air… urgh. And she was too proud to call and ask Vision for help.
She screamed again, just to get it out of her system, and got a glass from behind the counter along with a flyer for some improve comedy group from the community action board that was overtaken by advertisements for yoga retreats and yuppie art projects.
"Alright, Shelob," she said, having taken a deep and steeling breath. "Time for you to leave."
She sidled through the shadows, crept up to the window, and leapt out, slamming the glass over the spider with a triumphant yelp. She slid the flyer under the glass, kicked the door open and flung the spider, receptacle and lid as far out into the night as she could, slamming the door behind her just as she heard it shattering in the distance and someone on the sidewalk screaming as the arachnidian horror was released into the wilds once more. With the beast vanquished, Eva slumped against a table with a sigh of relief. Finally, she was done being terrorised by –
THADUNK.
She shrieked as a large red and blue thing slammed into the window and instinctively grabbed a mop again.
"Sorry," groaned the amazing Spider-Man, and fell onto the sidewalk. Eva swore loudly and walked onto the street.
"Hey," she said, poking him in the ribs with the mop. "You okay?"
"Uh-huh," he said, rolling onto his back with another moan. "Miscalculated the angle of the swing, that's all. I'm Spider-Man, by the way. Hello."
"Thought you hang around in Queens?" Eva asked. "Not, y'know, fall down in Manhattan."
"Yeah," said Spider-Man, "I thought I'd come and have a look around. Ouch."
"Do you want some ice for your, uh, everything?"
"Yes please," he said, staggering to his feet. "Hey. You know the Avengers, right? I saw you getting drunk with them in the newspaper a while back."
Eva held the door to the coffee shop open for him. "Thank you for reminding me of that," she said.
"I'm friends with them too! Mr Stark, anyway. Well, not friends. Colleagues. Associates."
Eva hopped over the counter to grab some ice. "How old are you, kid?" she asked, wrapping a towel around a few handfuls.
"I – I'm not a kid," said Spider-Man, putting on a gruff voice. Eva raised an eyebrow as she leant over and handed him the ice. "There's a reason people don't call me Spider-Boy."
"Whatever," she said. "You can take that with you, if you want. It must be past your bedtime now anyway."
"I'm not a kid!" he protested again, this time in the much higher voice he had been speaking in beforehand.
"Never said you were," she replied brusquely. "I have to close up now, so clear off before I trap you in a latte glass and throw you into the street."
"What?"
"Never mind."
A/N okay, so when I was a kid I used to love spiders (like, a nest hatched in our back garden and I spent an afternoon watching hundreds of baby spiders crawl everywhere with utter delight) but then I made friends with someone in high school who had hardcore arachnophobia and now I can only handle either really really big ones (they're cuddly) or really really little ones (too small to be scary). Anything in between is devil spawn. Also, did y'all like Homecoming? My favourite part by far was Zendaya's character. I long to reach her level of sardonicism.