Work Text:
Ka-thump.
The ball ricocheted off the sheet-metal wall and back into Eva’s hand.
Ka-thump.
Stuck doing the night shift again, she had long since given up trying to finish her homework to pass the time, instead opting to watch the late-night news on the watchhouse’s tiny television. She was leaned as far back as possible in the rickety desk chair, her converses propped up on the abandoned chemistry books on the table. The junkyard dog, Hoover, snored peacefully underfoot.
Ka-thump. Ka-thump.
The news was going through their ‘superhero block’. Dolled-up suits droned on about which cape had been punching holes in the pavement or spotted on an instagram story today, the stories always ending with the same mantra pleading people not to seek out superheroes for the internet clout.
“--and that concludes our nightly look into the wild side of the Big Apple. Remember to get away, report, and stay away if you’re ever in a Code Cape situation. Now for the latest updates on our local weather--”
Ka-thump. Ka-thump.
Watching this part of the news cycle at work is always a stark contrast to the experience of watching it at home. As if on script, Eva’s parents always start to gripe at the mere mention of a cape about how they remember a time when superhuman exploits were headline news instead of the meandering lead-in for announcements about Strawberry Festivals or animal adoption.
The thought of a time before the ‘Heroic Age’ (as her history professor calls it) fascinates Eva. What would it have been like to go three days without an emergency alert text telling what part of the city you should avoid today? To not have “Code Cape” drills in school? To not have an interesting story to tell you boss about how you got stuck in traffic due to a superhuman conflict?
Guess there are some things you can just get too used to in New York City.
Ka-thump. (crash)
Suddenly, Hoover’s head sprung up, ears swiveling in attention. Eva reached down to pat the boston terrier on the head reassuringly, but he bolted out of the small makeshift watchhouse and into the junkyard.
Eva huffed and watched him disappear into the night. Hoover must have heard another rat or something. He’d be back as soon as he’d chased it into its hidey-hole, she reasoned.
She crossed her legs on the desk, and returned to watching the dim television.
Ka-thump. Ka-thump.
Ka-th--CRASH!
Eva gripped the arms of the chair, startled by the sudden noise. “Ow!” The ball bounced back and beaned her in the temple.
Hoover was barking now, the sound echoed and distant, but unmistakably louder and with more urgency than she had ever heard before.
She reached around the desk for the BB gun hidden behind the television, one that the owner had confiscated from a few delinquents he found shooting bottles in the junkyard a while back. It wasn’t much, but from far away it looked like a real rifle.
Tying her plaid jacket around her waist, she stepped out of the watchouse. With a click, she turned the penlight duct-taped to the BB gun’s muzzle on, but it’s light did little to cut through the dim atmosphere of the yard.
“Hoover?” The terrier continued to raise alarm from deep in the chilly junkyard. She whistled, “Hoovey, here boy! Leave the rats alone!”
A loud bang and shudder of metal definitely caused by something bigger than either Hoover or a rat resonated from the car parts section of the junkyard.
She clutched the rifle tightly to her chest, knuckles whitening around its stock.
Quietly, Eva followed the sound of Hoover’s whiny bark to the far edge of the property, winding through pathways lined with the ghosts of cars. Their hollowed-out, empty shells added to her growing anxiety.
Hoover’s barking was the loudest in a small clearing at the far corner of the yard, where the car scrap towered over the property’s fence line and cast in harsh shadow by a lone streetlight.
Clang! Plink!
“Ahh, shh ! Please, please go away puppy…!”
Eva gasped and ducked behind a spare truck. Someone was here, in the junkyard, and… and...
She peeked up through the truck door’s busted-out window into the clearing. A few yards away, Hoover was scrabbling at the front bumper of a car, barking maniacally upwards into a thick patch of shadows. The terrier’s untrimmed nails made ear-splitting noises on the rusted metal.
The offending shadows shifted, and Eva saw two huge, reflective white eyes materialize out of the night.
“Shh, shh! I’m just trying to…!” She saw a silhouette of a leg carefully extend down to the ground, which immediately retracted when the dog snapped at their toes. After a few more futile tries and pleas, the figure began to leap from car to car to avoid the dog, who continued pursue the trespasser.
Suddenly, after more futile, whispered pleading, the shadowed man made a mad dash for a nearby dumpster to the immediate right of Eva, and with the grace of a dancer, he leapt up and uncannily balanced on the lip of the open bin without even having to temporarily readjust.
Eva clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle her breath.
The trespasser crouched over the lip of the bin, almost doubling over to peer inside. The white, unblinking eyes glinted faintly against the darkness of the rest of his body.
He seemed distracted, mumbling to himself about micro-transistors and whatnot, so he didn’t seem to notice Eva hunkered in her own thick blanket of shadows to his right.
“...Oh! Bingo!” The man disappeared inside the dumpster, scraping noises of metal hitting metal adjusting to the new weight echoed from inside the bin.
Eva still doesn’t know if it was stupidity or bravery, but without thinking she rushed over to the dumpster and, in a flash, wrenched the lid upwards, slamming it closed on the trespasser inside.
Quickly scrambling to sit on top, she kept her entire weight on the heavy lid, now at a complete loss for what to do. Does she start making demands? Does she scream for help? Does she ask calmly what he’s doing creeping around at night?
She’s broken out of her racing thoughts as the lid under her is lifted upwards--the trespasser opening it as easily as a door--sending her shrieking into a pile of spare bike parts.
Something climbed out of the dumpster and made the rusted metal hood of the truck she was hiding behind groan loudly.
She scrambled to an upright position, swinging the BB gun out in front of her defensively, penlight shining defiantly at…
“Whoa! Hey, you alright?” Spider-Man asked, his brightly-colored form perched on the truck’s hood illuminated in the spotlight.
Hoover, ever serious at his job, is still wildly trying to nip at the vigilante’s feet, keeping him from approaching her.
Spider-Man. Local menace by most people’s standards, and Eva’s seen more than enough opinion pieces about what kind of weird, dangerous biology he could be hiding under that colorful get-up. Overall, reports about the guy were spotty at best.
“I -- I don’t want any trouble, I just heard Hoover barking and -- I don’t have any money there’s no money here...” She gulped. Her thoughts switched back to the superhero program, the mantra! “I’ll call the police!”
He perked up. “No--no, I don’t mean any harm! I’m a good guy!”
“What kind of good guy sneaks around in a junkyard at night!”
“I’m a good guy! I swear, I -- here, look -- ” Spider-Man quickly unclipped something from his wrist and tossed it in her direction. “ -- I’m just looking for parts to fix my webshooters!”
Hesitantly, she picked it up, keeping the BB gun trained on the vigilante.
“Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, y’know? I’m friendly!” he puffed, sitting down criss-cross on the rusted hood. “It’s in the name!”
Turning it over in one hand, Eva saw that the mechanisms of the…”webshooter” were warped and covered in a tacky substance.
“Augh, it’s sticky!”
The spider gave a quiet laugh.
“That’s the Trapster for you, if you think that’s bad you would not be-leive how much it costs to dry clean full-body spandex. There’s not even a superhero discount!” He rambled, “Y’know the last time I fought the guy my suit was so covered in glue that I couldn’t use the little hero’s room for---”
“But the pressure system on this thing is amazing , the mechanics, the -- is that a small motor to continually replace these cartridges?” she interrupted. Whatever this thing was, it was an amazing, enchanting piece of machinery, causing Eva’s heart to flutter.
“...You like it?” The spider hero cocked his head slightly.
“It’s...neat.”
Eva felt the small device in her hands. It looked similar to a pressure-based pellet gun she had built once before in her highschool’s mechanics class, but so much smaller and sleeker.
Eva met the pearly eyes of the mask. “Tell you what, I’ll...I’ll help you. I won’t report this or whatever, either to the yard owner or the cops, but -- ” she addressed him, his lenses blinked once in anticipation, “ -- in return, I want to know how this thing works. As much as you’ll tell me.”
They sat in uncomfortable silence. Well, except for the rhythmic squeaking of the metal folding chair in tune to Spidey’s bouncing leg. Small bits-and-pieces that Peter had gathered prior to being shut in the dumpster were spread out on the watchhouse’s table.
He twiddled his thumbs.
The dog, Hoover, had finally given up trying to rip his shins apart and now watched him from the corner with the same hard look of suspicion as the girl currently pointing the BB gun at his chest.
“You’re not going to, like, eat me , right?”
Spider-Man turned to her, lenses squinted. “No…?” Man, he needs a new publicist.
Or better yet, the money to hire a publicist.
“...Good.” She sat cross-legged in her spinning desk chair, BB gun used to turn her slightly side-to-side. “Just trying to cover my bases, don’t know if you’re more ‘spider’ than ‘man’ under that onesie, y’know.”
“It’s not a onesie, it’s a…tactical form-fitting disguise.”
She stifled a laugh.
“A onesie wouldn’t even be practical!” he continued, feeling the tension break a smidge. “Think of the costume changes, with this I can just throw off my outer clothes and put the gloves, boots, and mask on, then -- tada! -- Spidey to the rescue!”
“So, does that mean you have to buy those tear-away stripper pants?” Spidey’s lenses became white slits. “Kidding! I don’t want to know.” She leaned back in her seat, a hidden smirk playing upon her lips.
“You’re awfully jokey for someone who threatened to swiss-cheese me a few minutes ago.” Spidey quipped.
“And you’re awfully talkative for someone who has a gun pointed in their face.”
“Ooh, touche. Although, being talkative in the face of danger is sort of my whole shtick, y’know.”
Peter doesn’t say that he’s known it wasn’t a real gun from the very beginning, he’s experienced what type of drumbeat his spider-sense plays to true rifles, and this one was more of a gentle tap-dance rather than an Iron Maiden drum solo. But if having the weapon makes her feel more confident about being around a superhuman, he wasn’t going to do anything to change that.
Peter began to pry the trigger mechanism off the base of the webshooter, “So, what would you like to know about it miss...?”
“Eva,” she held out a hand for him to shake. “I’d love to get a look at how the pressure system works, for starters.”
Spider-Man hummed. “Well, this bit--” he held up the sensor part of the trigger mechanism, “--rests in the palm. Whenever I need a web, I can put pressure on it and cause a secondary mechanism to release webbing.” Spidey took off a glove and began scraping away at the hardened glue on the base of the sensor with his fingernail. “Different pressures release different types of sprays, too.”
“How do you not set it off accidentally when landing or using your hands, then?” she asked.
“Easy, it takes an enormous amount of direct pressure to set it off. I can’t tell you how much, but it’s enough that an ordinary person wouldn’t be able to use ‘em.”
The girl, Eva, became more entranced by the second as Peter showed her how each piece of the webshooter worked, and at the same time, consistently showed an impressive amount of engineering knowledge that went behind it.
Her chair gradually scooted closer and closer to Spidey’s station, until she was practically leering over his shoulder at his progress, and piece by mangled, sticky piece, Peter gradually walked her through every step of the fixing process.
“There,” With a scraping-off of glue here and a replaced motor there, he snapped the webshooter to his wrist in triumph. “Still gummy, may stink like glue for a month or two, but at least it’s no more MetroCard fares for this little spider.”
Thwip! He flung a test web to the ceiling of the watchhouse, giving the strand an experimental tug. Hoover made a low growl in warning.
“How’d you even get beat by the Trapster ?” Eva marvelled at the silk thread, plucking it like a guitar string. “He’s just a guy with a big glue gun, right?”
Spidey made an offended noise. “You kidding? Have you ever fought a guy who’s super-villain name used to be Paste-Pot Pete ? It’s impossible to see where he’s shooting that Elmer’s glue when tears of laughter are fogging up your mask!”
“And I did not get my butt handed to me by Ol’ Petey-Pot, by the way.” He waggled a finger in the air. “I was just too caught up in making arts-and-crafts jokes. Got sloppy for a second. It happens.”
He placed the second broken webshooter on the table, and Eva’s heart started to flutter again.
Spidey pried the shooter’s trigger off the warped base with a short grunt. “Been meaning to ask, are you a mechanic? Studying to be a mechanic? You seem to really like this stuff.”
She sighed and slightly rolled away from the vigilante. “No, I’m actually a chemistry major. My parents say that chemistry would make a more ‘respectable profession’ than being a mechanic, but…”
Eva motioned to the discarded chemistry books on the table, which had been pushed aside to make room for Spidey’s webshooters. “...I just can’t seem to get a grip around any of the concepts.”
“No kiddin’?” He glanced over at the textbooks. Organic chemistry, yeouch . “A ‘weed-em-out’ class, huh?”
In lieu of a sophisticated reply, she groaned and rested her forehead on the business end of the BB gun.
Peter hummed and put the webshooter down. “Here, let’s do a little trade. Switch with me.” He stood up from his metal chair, gently motioning for Eva to get up out of her own. Hoover growled at Spidey’s sudden movement.
“What?” She gripped the muzzle of the gun just a smidge tighter.
“I’ll help you with your chemistry, and you get to play with my broken toys,” Spidey quickly explained. Eva, hesitantly, did as asked and switched places with the spider, the metal folding chair creaking as she settled down. “You saw me fix the other one, I think you can figure it out.”
Eva watched him spread out her textbooks and rub his hands together. “You …know chemistry?” she asked.
“Yeah! Studied it all my life, essentially.” He cracked open the first book, flipping to the page with the unfinished homework sticking out. Peter recognizes this assignment, he’s TA’d for this exact class before.
“Huh... I would have thought you’d do, like, gymnastics or punching people or... “ she trailed off, absentmindedly spinning the twisted shooter in one hand.
“Nah, ‘punching people’ is just my minor. But you can imagine that’s as useful as an art history degree, so a guy’s gotta supplement his resume somehow.”
Eva snorted. “I have a friend who’s an art history major.”
“And are they dining at the Ritz?”
“Are you , Mr. Chemistry-Man?”
Spidey paused, then laughed, high, breathy and genuine. “...Well, I guess you did find me digging around in a dumpster.”
Eva smiled and refocused on the broken webshooter. She turned it around in her hand, inspecting it.
The base was twisted horribly, the cartridge-bracelet-thing looked almost like a figure eight from certain angles. She cringed inwardly imagining how this deformation happened while attached to Spider-Man’s wrist. Eva tried her best to wring it back into its original shape, to no avail.
“Oh! Sorry, lemme straighten that out for you.” He snatched the device from Eva’s hand, startling her a bit. The vigilante twisted the metal back into a normal shape as easy as folding paper. “Here you go. Have at it, friend-o.”
The shooter clattered to the table, Eva not moving to pick it up again.
Spidey stilled. “Something...wrong?”
Eva shook her head, chasing away her thoughts. “No, it’s just--when you’re just talking with…someone like you… you kinda forget the-- the--”
“Super-strength?”
“Yeah, I guess you just--”
“Super-good looks?”
Eva snorted. “Sure.” She fiddled with the broken device, slowly working to put it back together in the way Spidey had shown her. “You just seem so normal, is what I was going to say. And as for your looks, it's hard to tell past that full-body sock you’re in.”
“Ah, well I gotta hide the ten-pound bags under my eyes somehow,” he conceded, scribbling on loose-leaf paper.
“Or the creepy mandibles?” Eva added, a hint of curiosity dancing across her words.
“What? No! What wackjob publisher told you that?” Spidey lifted up his mask, exposing his mouth, and proceeded to stick his tongue out at her. “No fangs, no ‘creepy mandibles’, no venom. Like I said, super-good looks.”
“Anyways, before you forget that you’re chatting with the Spider-Man again, can I, uh…” He shifted awkwardly in the spinny chair “...get more comfortable? I can focus more in a web.”
Eva arched her brow at him, perplexed by the question. “Sure…? It’s not like I’d be able to stop you, Spidey.”
“Oh, ok, thanks.”
Eva stopped her work to watch Spider-Man build a web in the corner of the watchouse. It was mesmerizing, just like she’d sometimes seen on blurry news clips, but more… subdued. Like he wasn’t trying to freak her out. And deep-down, she was. Ever since capes started showing up everyone has been conditioned to give them space, to not interact with them for their own safety, so Eva knew that being afraid of the masked man who danced through the sky on ropes of silk was warranted on some level.
But watching this guy -- who, at any point, could have chosen to snap her BB gun in half and take off instead of fulfilling her stupid, impulsive request and then offering to help her with homework -- carefully settle himself into a delicate web-hammock with her chemistry book, she began to understand why some people felt so drawn to capes despite the countless dangers. They’re larger-than-life, but familiar in a way that stumps Eva.
“Hey, to what problem were you assigned?” Spidey piped up, his mask lenses almost hidden behind dangling legs.
“Uh, to number fifteen, I think.”
“Gotcha.”
And so the watch house descended into silence, the only noises being quiet scribblings coming from the silk hammock in the corner and the tinkering of metallic parts.
A loud thump startled Eva awake.
Blinking rapidly, she first sees that the webshooter she finished repairing hours ago is still sitting idle on the rickety wooden table. A low, rumbly sound was coming from her right, and as she tried to calm her heart rate down she spun around to face it.
Spider-Man was sound asleep in the web-hammock, splayed-out and snoring. The fallen chemistry book laid upside down on the dirt floor of the watchhouse, a few loose-leaf papers still fluttering down from the spider’s perch.
She collected it up, placing it neatly on the wooden table, before prodding at the hero with the BB gun.
It took a few tries, but the mask lenses eventually opened up to their normal, buggy size as the hero tossed himself upright in the web.
“It’s almost dawn, you gotta go before the yard owner gets here for the day shift,” she informed him.
“Ahh, yeah, no problem-o.” Sluggishly, Spider-Man hopped down from his perch and pulled his arms upwards into a satisfying stretch. “Shooter?”
Eva held out the device for him. “Ah-ha!” Spidey took it, giving it a once-over before clipping it to his wrist. “Good as new!”
“Yeah, well, try to avoid getting glue-gunked in the future.” Eva started, crossing her arms around her middle, “Also… thanks for showing me it’s mechanics. And, uh, helping me with my homework, which you really didn’t have to do, by the way.”
“ Psshh ,” Spider-Man’s lenses did a friendly-squint, “I was technically stealing from the junkyard, figured it was a good way to give you some form of payment for those parts I needed.”
Spider-Man continued to stretch in the cramped space. “And as for the little shooter-showcase, it was no biggie. It felt really nice to just work on mechanical stuff with someone, that’s something I haven’t done in years,” his voice tapered off in nostalgia. He seemed to grow distant for a second, absentmindedly rubbing at the webshooter on his wrist.
Eva motioned to the door of the watchhouse, “C’mon, out with you.”
Spidey shuffled to the door. Hoover growled slightly as his boots passed by his spot under the chair. He paused in the threshold.
“Hey, uh...I know I don’t know you that well and all, but…” he started.
“If you’re about to ask me out on a date I will shoot you full of bullets.”
“N-No! I wasn’t-- I wasn’t going to ask you out! I wouldn’t--” He panicked, “Not that you’re not pretty! You are! You’re really pretty! I just-- I mean--”
“Spit it out, Spidey.”
“Mechanics! I saw the way your eyes lit up at everything, the way you listened to my explanations with more attention or consideration than Tony-freakin'-Stark or Richards ever did! You’d be a great mechanic, Eva, I think it’d really suit you.” Spider-Man took a big breath. “Truly.”
Eva was taken aback, genuinely surprised at where that went. “Why...Why do you care?”
Spider-Man paused. He ran a hand over the top of his head, as if to ruffle hair, and sighed. “When I was younger, I thought about getting a career that I didn’t particularly like--to help out with my family, you know-- but someone...close to me encouraged me to pursue what I felt passionate about. He didn’t want me to be like him, he said, stuck in a job you feel obligated to do while that ‘what if?’ question runs through the back of your head day after day.”
He shifted nervously, swaying side-to-side in the doorway of the watchhouse. “I know I have no place telling you what you can or can’t do, and that my circumstances are way different than yours, but…”
“I’ll...think about it, Spider-Man.” Eva was shocked, he had essentially voiced what a tiny piece of her had been screaming for years, after only knowing her for a few hours! Was she that easy to read?
Spider-Man slumped in relief. “O-Okay, great! Awesome.” He backed out from the doorway and into the yard, the looming shadow of Brooklyn casting his colorful suit in a deep purple as the rising sun painted the horizon pink. “Uh, guess I’ll be going then.”
Eva watched the vigilante vault upwards onto one of the property’s tall fences, arm outstretched to fling a web.
“Hey!” She shouted. He froze and spun around. “If you ever come back, use the front entrance!”
The hero gave a silent salute in acknowledgement. Then flipped backwards, swinging off into the morning air.
He did come back.
Not often, of course, but he would always bring something new and interesting for her to fix or marvel at.
A busted toaster (probably his), a Hello Kitty watch from a different dimension, an IDog from 2006 that could somehow pass the Turing test, and a bucket of faulty spider-tracers were her current favorites.
Spider-Man was also an awesome chemistry tutor. The first time he left, she found that he had written out detailed explanations on how to solve each homework problem, and from then on she noticed that her GPA has consistently rose a half-point after each meeting with the hero.
She was also exploring her options for mechanical engineering or mechanic jobs, much to Spidey’s delight, since she wasn’t comfortable switching her major yet.
As for the vigilante, he refused to elaborate on anything superhero-y that’d happened to him recently, explaining that being a “superhero confidant” gets in the way of chemistry and mechanics. Not that she was complaining, it just made watching the ‘superhero block’ of the newscycle for mentions of Spidey a staple of her daily routine.
Overall, Eva had warmed right up to the spidery vigilante’s company, no matter if he had eight eyes under that mask or not. The night shift became much less of a bore whenever he stopped by, even if it’s just for an hour or two.
Capes, Spider-Man, webshooters, chemistry books. Smiling, Eva puffed a quiet breath. There are some things you can just get too used to in New York City.
(Epilogue/Extra: The gunk-ening of the webshooter)
